Ryan,
Shallow? How So?
Are you going off of Raynor work here or actual C.B. MacDonald work with Seth Raynor?
I seem to think you've seen, maybe even played Fox Hollow (Raynor) but how many actual MacDonald courses have you actually seen in person. You don't have to play them, but actually see them and the architecture? (I do in fact trust your eye to some great extent.)
So much shite is made of this template hole stuff; honestly I don't see what is wrong with being inspired, or emulating certain features which make the Sport great. It isn't unlike a great rock song. Take any of the great masters of classic rock from the 60's and 70's and they "play" homage to the great bluesmen of a previous day. Its no different with great golf architecture.
Take for instance, George C. Thomas and Riviera #4, which happens to be--still--one of the best Redans I've ever played. I love that hole. I still think that there is a great possibility that Bel Air's once famous Mae West-hole was nothing less then inspired by an Alps. Pick-up Thomas' book and see the images he has of the National Golf Course in Southampton. The point to this is that, in America, there had to be inspiration--a starting point from which to build golf in this country--interesting golf. That is the connection. There were other courses before National that showed great moxie for their time--Myopia Hunt Club; Maidstone and many others. But Golf took to this Nation like an epidemic and CBM saw it sort of losing it lustor because it was being misunderstood. An effort to change the Sport--make it totally fair was afoot by powers that be could be uncontrollable--the American mindset who didn't know the Sport. It would be no different then stepping on to a baseball diamond and rewriting the rules of baseball to some extent. CBM's entire purpose for Scotland's Gift: Golf was to show the aspects he saw of it from his vantage point; his time. This man used to play Golf with Young Tom, Old Tom, and many others. He was fortunate to have been there and done that and better, showed America how to play it.
A major problem with all of us is that we want answers to our questions; and Scotland's Gift doesn't get it done for some because they can only view the man as the bombastic character that he was. Yet, CBM is putting it into his words for you to see. Your just not seeing it--yet. (and you will see it eventually) It's almost like trying to understand ancient sandscript for some. But honestly, I view this book as not only important, but gives an idea of what he went through. Here's my point: In the architecture section, which most skip immediately because they was architectural answers, a great majority of the readers don't get what they want to fulfill them. They want details, and C.B. fell short of that for some. Me, I read the details and understood each and everyone of them. The point being that politics just as much drives the architecture; sometimes unfortunate luck. And that is the problem with Golf in America, that to play Golf the right way was to embrace the ideas and principles and going from there. At the end, that would be American Golf; just like in Australia, they have Australian Golf and in Japan, they had Japanese Golf. Its different, no different then having a meal of authentic Japanese food.
That to me is what CBM was writing about.