David
John has answered the part of your post to me regarding his feelings, and I think he has a very legitimate point to make. I personally see Mackenzie's writings (and those of Macdonald, BTW) to be less about teaching and more about self-promotion, but I do understand that others see it differently.
As for your other points I completely reject your implication that Tom Doak (or anybody else) has, a priori, an opinion that is better or worse than mine or anybody else's. The proof is in the pudding, but if the audience is populated only by fellow puddings, the quality of the proof can be diminished....
I must add, that while I still think that the half-pipe bunker on the 10th is just eye-candy (you have to pop-up a drive and duck hook a 3-wood to get there), I think that at Pasatiempo there is much more interesting architecture than at Cypress. It was a much tougher site, and Dr. Mack made some great golf holes (2, 11, 16, even 10 (sans half-pipe)) off of a challenging set of topos.
I haven't really heard yet why the half-pipe on 10 is so great. Tom D and Mike G try to make a point of the fact that I've never been in that bunker complex. Well, I would never expect to be there, and I'm not that good of a golfer. It's just a (to some people) pretty irrelevance. A perfect definition (to me at least) of "Eye Candy."
Rich