John:
I won't respond on behalf of Ralph, but here's my own take on what one could learn from playing Lawsonia.
By many accounts, Lawsonia is regarded as something of the zenith of Langford and Moreau's course designing and engineering -- severely pushed-up greens, wide, gull-winged bunkers backed by severe mounding, significant internal green contouring, the wide playing corridors providing various lines of play, the intentional use of blindness and misdirection to give the golfer pause before taking on the next shot. It's all on display on all 18 holes of Lawsonia.
The course was built in 1930, and although L/M did some courses after that, the Depression took a major toll on their design business, and apparently few L/M courses built after Lawsonia really matched it for displaying their (somewhat) unique look.
There is a view that L/M's style was an evolutionary one -- e.g., the notion of severely pushed-up greens was not in evidence in earlier designed L/M courses (to cite one example, Wisconsin's Ozaukee Country Club, built in 1922), nor was the severity of their deep bunkering.
I've been toying with a theory that L/M's signature style was more a product of money -- that is, the kind of architecture on display at Lawsonia cost a bunch of money, and therefore L/M had more license to do more extravagant work on well-financed projects (to see some of Lawsonia's green complexes, knowing what they had to work with in terms of technology back in 1930, suggests they had to spend a lot of money to build the course, and they did).
To me, it would be interesting to compare the look of Vincennes (a 1921 course from my sources) to that of Lawsonia. I note that several L/M courses with very dramatic features -- West Bend, Harrison Hills, Culver Academies -- were only nine hole courses, and one of those (West Bend) had plans for 18 but the club essentially ran out of money.
To me, the question of whether L/M's signature look was an evolutionary one, or one dictated by other forces, is worth pursuing, through playing as many of their courses as possible.
I guess I need to make it down to Vincennes! And apologies, for prior commitments keep me from hosting you this Saturday at Lawsonia (where I could show you the genius of the 8th hole, for starters, and argue that the par 3 4th is a harder hole than the par 3 10th, a notion at odds with Ron Forse...).
Can you do Lawsonia on Monday? That I can do.