Jeff
I don't know that it's a brand new idea, and not to blow smoke your way, by I think your Quarry Course and Mike DeVries' Mines Course are very important developments, i.e. essentially re-claiming the land, re-vitalizing it, leaving something there that's far better than was there before. I think any new agronomic developments/research will go hand in hand with this. I don't want to get into an environmental debate - they seem to lead nowhere. But I'm convinced that land and water use and stewardship issues and going to increase exponentially in the coming years, even in the short term. So taking land that no one else wants or can use, and bringing it back to a fuller life, and enhancing biodiversity, all while giving us a field of play....well, that's the ticket. And if courses can be built inexpensively and maintained inexpensively and with respect, and if imaginative mixed-use ideas can be enacted, the good created will accrue to the broader community/society, and I think that's even better (and more necessary). I go on alot around here about expanding the conventional/traditional forms and ideas of what constitutes 'shot testing' and this is why -- I think the broader those concepts become and the more widely accepted they become, the more types of re-claimed land and the more kinds of 'boring' sites can become potential candidates for golf courses
Peter