Wayno:
Don't get into an Internet fist fight with Donnie because he's a really good fellow and he's also a lot bigger than you and he will beat the tar outta you in a nanosecond unless you do something really disgusting and completely against the etiquette of gentlemanly pugilism like bite his ear off first.
Look, Wayno, I was going to save this for a very considered response to Anthony Fowler's initial question, but I think you need to understand a few things at this point.
First, you really do have a heightened sense and understanding of the importance and perhaps even subliminal satisfaction of what naturalism is and means in golf architecture and even if it's not used in the extreme how a good architect can blend in what he makes to get it to look like it sort of is real naturalism at least in a damn fine "fool the eye" sense (how many golfers actually go out off a green and pick up the obvious natural grades and then walk it in to see how well what was made ties in like we sometimes do?
). You know Pal, who knows and understands the real "Nature Faker" who could do that so well better than you do?
But second, and perhaps most importantly (and this is what I was going to get deep into with my considered response to Anthony Fowler), you have got to understand that many, many golfers, perhaps even most, may not like the look of naturalism at all. Matter of fact they may even enjoy the manufactured look of a style like Macd/Raynor more, particularly if a course plays as well as most all of theirs do.
Have you ever wondered why this may be so? Have you ever really considered perhaps the biggest dynamic of all in golf architecture, perhaps one of the biggest and most important dynamics of mankind---the dynamic of Man and Nature, the dynamic of Man against Nature which is fairly primal, the dynamic of man's struggle to survive in Nature, to overcome it, to conquer and control it all in furtherance of the primal goal of instinctual survival, and then perhaps dominance which is uniquely human?
If this be the case, and of course it is, is it any wonder why Man may actually glory in the things he makes and that look like he made them? Isn't this THE instinctual or even subliminal contest with Nature to prove he's got what it takes to be dominant over all things he can see and touch and even imagine?
I do realize this makes one of the most important premises of Maxie Baby Behr pretty wrong because the last eighty years since he wrote what he did about the everlasting importance of extreme naturalism in golf has probably proven wrong his hope and wish and belief that all golfers should and probably would demand extreme naturalism in golf architecture. I think it's pretty certain to say the last eighty years has proven that a very large slice of them really don't care about that, and the most frightening of all is very many may actually like the other more for the very reasons I just outlined above.
Now don't worry your pretty little head about this tonight or you might blow the top off of it thinking too much. You get some rest now and we'll speak tomorrow---OK, Wayno? NIGHTEE NIGHT NOW! SWEET DREAMS AND DON'T LET THE BEDBUGS FIGHT---I mean BITE.