Bradley:
You produced a quotation from one very noted golfer from the old days, Ted Ray, and what he said about Oakmont's bunkers. That was from 1927 and what Ray said was almost universally what just about every good or great golfer from those days said about Oakmont, including Bob Jones. It seems back then if one spoke about Oakmont it was almost always on the subject of Oakmont's bunkers. What Jones said about Oakmont's bunkers was perhaps the single most critical thing I have ever seen Jones say about any golf course or anything to do with a golf course or architecture.
Why was that? It's pretty simple really, the Fowneses, particularly W.C., the son, was a virtual maniac on the difficulty or penality of bunkers and he sure didn't mind admitting it (after all he was the one who coigned the term "a shot missed should be a stroke lost forever" ) and finding his own new and revolutionary ways to make them more so. Just the invention of those remarkable weighted furrow rakes is a perfect example. And he with his primary greenkeeper, Emil Loeffler, completely revolutionized the concept of real greenspeed maybe 20 to 30 years before any other course and club did (that is a truly fascinating story in and of itself, that I believe I can document and through someone who was actually there and mowed those green back before 1950).
Is that alone---Oakmont's bunkers---the real reason or even the primary reason that course got so much respect or should be considered to be great golf course architecture?
I think not. At the end of W.C.'s administration and just before he died in the late 1940s (1950, I think) that course it is said had close to 300 bunkers. Is that what made it the great architecture it is? I think not. If they reduced the number of bunkers on that course to less than 100 bunkers I think it still would be one of the truly great courses and great architecture in the world. The greatness of Oakmont's architecture is very definitely unique, that's for sure----eg The Fowneses, particularly W.C. does not appear to have followed anyone else's model other than his own.
The point is the routing (not the bunkering or the green shapes and sizes because there was neither on that 1903 routing plan) is so similar to what that 1903 plan shows (sans tee lengthening) and as far as I can tell only a very limited number of greens have ever been significantly changed, obviously the best examples being #8 and #17. Some of the others including #1!!, #2, #3!, #5!, #6, #9, #10!!!, #12!!!!, #15! and #16 and even #18 are real works of genius and the fact is a number of those mentioned probably always have been whole lot more "natural landform" than most any, even including some close architectural analysts, realize.
You throw into that mix the variety of the holes individually, as well as in their sequencing, and you come up with a truly remarkable, revolutionary and groundbreaking golf course, golf architecture, AND routing, particularly for such an early time in the evolution of American golf architecture!