Ran:
There seems to be one other interesting facet of Pine Valley and Crump. That is that Crump appears to have had a quite rigid plan in mind for the course either before or just after he bought the property. I would call this idea or plan the old fashioned actual "tough examination of every club and every type of shot" attitude or plan for both routing and design.
I believe Crump may have had a very specific and preconceived "balance and variety" scheme in his head preconstruction and that could be some of the reason it took so long to finalize and complete construction of the course!
It also appears that Crump began to construct before his entire 18 routing was finalized and consequently all the hole designs were finalized too. This incremental or segmented method of creation and construction is what I would call "constructing yourself into a box" and it appears Crump did that to an extent--the "box" ultimately being 12-15.
It appears that some aspects of Wilson's original routing and hole configurations at Merion were also quite bizarre!
PVGC was really not completed for almost 10 years from its start and Merion did not come into its present form for almost 18 years from its start!
The inspiration for Pine Valley was really two things.
1. To play winter golf (because PV's area has always been considered app. 10 degrees winter warmer than Philly!) and Crumps group got tired of traveling all the way to Atlantic City for their winter golf, and;
2. To build a really first class golf course as Crump & friends felt that Philadephia did not have one at that time--they were apparently a bit disallusioned with the courses they belonged to and played on then!
It seems that the fundamental inspiration for the level of quality of both courses may have come from the inspiration of NGLA! Both Wilson and Crump made the same extended tours of Europe in search of design ideas that MacDonald once had many years before!
Certainly Wilson had a two day crash course from MacDonald before going to Europe but I'm not sure if Crump did--he may have done it more on his own with his friend Joseph Baker playing Sunningdale, Walton Heath, Turnberry, Prestwick, Hoylake (where he played John Ball, Champion of England who beat him two and one). They also played TOC, Royal St. Georges, Royal Cinque Ports, and Princes before taking off for the contintent and Egypt. Perhaps Crump met Harry Colt on this European trip. It seems as if the "heathland" course became his inspiration, as it must have looked much like Camden Co. NJ to him.
I've never heard that Crump made any notes or drawings of any holes in Europe though. Wilson went to Europe for the express purpose of holes ideas and concepts as Merion was in the works but on Crump's 1910 trip Pine Valley was obviously just a dream and at least two years from even the beginning of the beginning.
All these early designers knew each other. Crump, Wilson, MacD, Tilliinghast, Travis, Travers, Emmet, Quimet and many others. One wonders why or how since they came from different cities.
The key was probably primarily the Lesley Cup Matches beginning in 1900 which involved the extremely popular and written about "Intercity" matches between Philadephia, New York and Boston and eventually inluding Quebec. It's impressive to see now all the early designers that played well were part of this.
The Lesley Cup Matches also set the formats for the later Walker and Ryder Cups.