Ran
Getting back to your original question, it should really be re-phrased something to the effect of:
1. Which living architect would have taken Old Tom Morris' routing up over and around the big hill (current holes holes 8-15)?; and
2. Which living architect would have stuck with Old Tom Morris' routing up over and around the big hill, as Simpson and Fowler did in 1926?
Is ask the latter question because I have always believed (and said so on here) that Cruden Bay could have been a much better course if S&F had abandoned holes 8-15 and used the great rolling linksland over which the 9-hole St. Olaf's course exists to fill out their 18. IMO it could have been as great as Dornoch if that decision had been made.
So, which living architect would have the cojones to go to a high profile golf club and tell them that they had to almost completely redo their well regarded course?
Finally, don't we have a living laboratory going on now relative to some of these questions in thwork that our own, Frank Pont, is now undertaking at Cruden Bay?
Rich
Funny enough the members play the course in the winter as follows: holes 1-7, 17-18, followed by the St. Olaf course. This because nobody feels like walking the up and down the 9th hole in a freezing wind….
I spend quite some time looking at how one would reroute Cruden Bay if one would start all over again. I would still use the land behind the big hill, rather than use the St. Olaf course, but I would get rid of hole 9. Hole 9 is a very poor hole, with a huge walk up and a huge walk down. Yes this yields great views but they are not enough to compensate for the walk. The hole could be improved , we did make an effort by cutting the gorse to open the views of the cliffs and the fairway was going to be move closer to the cliffs, but this has not happened yet (one can see the gorse removed on Google Earth).
I would therefore not use the current holes 8 (a pity!), 9 (no loss) and 10 (again no great loss other than a teeshot from high above).
Instead I would use the narrow area below the hill to go to and come from the area where currently hole 10-14 lie. Tom Doak is right that the area of holes 14 and 15 are very narrow, and that it is difficult to put two holes next to each other. The only way that would work would be to have two par 3 holes playing along each other.
Where would we find the three holes to make up the loss of 8-10?
That is not too difficult. Fist there already is a spare par 3 hole I built two years ago at the end of the property, between hole 12 and 13.
The other thing to keep in mind is that there is fantastic unused linksland behind green 4, and besides holes 5,6 and 7. (this area is so large in fact that I even managed to design and extension of the St.Olaf course to 18 holes using this area). It would be very easy to put 2,3 or even 4 holes in this area.
Therefore one could think of the following course:
Hole 1, hole 2, hole 3, hole 4, new hole 1 (par 4), new hole 2 (par 4), hole 5, hole 6, hole 7, new hole 3 (par 3 playing from reverse side to green 15), new hole 4 (driveable par 4 playing from reverse side to the green of hole 11), hole 12, new hole 5 (current spare par 3 hole), hole 13 (to a new green closer to the beach), hole 14 (remade into a par 3), hole 16, hole 17, hole 18.
This would be the routing I would use if I had to start again, and what an exciting mental exercise it is to think this through, but I do not believe for one moment that classic courses like Cruden Bay should be changed this much… I will use that creative energy on my own new build courses.