Ran:
Interesting first post there about what Coore feels about Pacific Dunes.
Perhaps more than any other architect I know, the things Bill Coore is apt to say about anything architectural makes me, at least, step back and wonder where he's coming from or what it is he really means. I'm not saying at all that he's impossible to understand, just that I feel some of the things he does say needs to be given some serious consideration on the part of those he says it too.
We were all out there at that archipalooza as PD's was opening. Remember?
I saw Bill Coore on the putting green and he'd been there for a day and had played Pac Dunes. I asked him what he thought of it, and he said it's just so different? So I asked him what he meant by that exactly and he just said it was so different. So what was I supposed to do ask him again what he meant exactly by so different?
But I think a year or so later I did ask him what the hell he meant by so different and I think he said he thought it was a good thing for a course to be really different, at the very least because "difference" in golf architecture is sort of the life's blood of the entire art form and game. Anything other than that or some attempt to go down some road of similarity or standardization within the art form would be sort of going in the direction of a tennis court, so to speak---eg similarity or standardization.
But I'm not certain of that because I have been to at least one site under construction where Bill tried to refuse to get out of the car he was so apparently shocked.
So, who knows what he ever really means by the things he's apt to say. All I can say is the things he does say fascinate me far more than the things any other architect I know says about architecture with the possible exception of Doak. Some times the things he says amaze me too and make me sit back and really ponder.
This is definitely no criticism of either of them. Matter of fact, I think it's probably a good thing, maybe a very good thing, maybe even a great thing. I like mystery, in golf architecture, and in other things too.
And it's interesting what you say about the par 5s at PD perhaps being holes that get you from one really good thing to another really good thing.
In my mind that is simply the mystery of what I call the jigsaw puzzle of routing and design. Some holes in the mind of the architect are what might be called "connectors". Other times, and it seems to me particularly with par 3s they can be the necessary "separators" the architect need in their area to connect two very good things he doesn't want to either give up or compromise.