JK: Sorry to offend you, of all people. I guess I should have spent a bit more time on my initial post, so I could spend less time on this one.
If Mr. Lehman had thought to mention that the boys had worked with us for several years, or if Mr. Pazin had not asked about their backgrounds, or if Kyle or Will ever posted here themselves, I probably wouldn't have said a thing. But since the answer was (D) none of the above, I thought it was fair to mention where they had worked before (and give them credit for it, incdientally). If you think that's a backhanded compliment or taking away credit, that's your opinion, but I disagree -- I think it's a lot better than most of the guys working for all of the other designers usually get.
The other point is that I mentioned them in the context I did because I have a bunch of other guys working with me who would be very sensitive that all of a sudden Kyle Franz is getting a bunch of praise on Golf Club Atlas -- for going to work for somebody else -- while others still work in relative obscurity for us, while their older brothers getting most of the credit. That's inevitable in this business ... I've lost out on a lot of talented people in the past few years because they see too many guys between themselves and #1 on my depth chart, and none of my guys are taking off to become architects on their own. Just capitalism in its purest form, I guess.
Anyway, I didn't post anything on this subject for your benefit, nor to cast doubt on what Kyle and Will are building in Nebraska; I hope they'll get the proper credit for that at the proper time. I posted mostly to try to keep my nucleus of guys intact, which is selfish in a different way. So, here's proper credit to all of my associates (you can find their names on our web site), plus Kye Goalby and Mike McCartin and Jonathan Reisetter and George Waters (who's actually working for Kyle Phillips in Europe right now), for their own contributions to what we are doing and for what we have done.
There ARE many occasions (and this is not one of them) when guys get undue credit for different jobs because somebody mentioned their names here, and others know better. (There are plenty of historical examples, too -- Dick Wilson at Shinnecock, CB Macdonald at Merion, etc., but I won't go there.) I don't know how to stop it from happening without looking like an a-hole, so I don't speak up -- but it's easy to see how it happens when people start talking about shapers without having any idea what they really do, or what they have actually done.