But Tom, how many of these courses you see with the "odd" (not 4-10-4) hole pars have been built recently. Certainly your work at Pacific Dunes and C&C at Kapalua are recent designs, but the rest seem to be very old designs. I had a thought about this while watching the Masters. How much did ANGC and its 'typical' 4-10-4 set-up with 2 par 3's and 2 par 5's on each side affect guys like RTJ when they built courses after Mr. Palmer's Masters win in 1958, or even before that because of ANGC being well known among golfers? I think that has done a lot to cause courses to be built such as they are in the typical fashion we see today.
John:
I agree with you that most of these boilerplate par-72 designs are descended from Augusta National. I read several articles about Augusta growing up which praised the fact that you never played two consecutive par-4's on the front nine and it was so evenly balanced ... completely omitting that the course really comes into its own at the start of the back nine, when you play 10 and 11 back to back ...
I do not know how many designers there are out there, besides myself and Bill Coore, who really don't care much about whether the two nines are evenly balanced. Lots of guys SAY they don't care, but I can't think of many who put anything into the ground that way. For that matter, I must admit that I have yet to build a course that has less than four par-3 holes, though I've built five on several occasions.
However, after thinking about it, I remember now that High Pointe only has the one par-3 on the front (#4), and Rock Creek waits as long as any course I've ever seen for its first par-3, at #8. Both of those courses have [or had] three one-shotters on the back nine. And Pacific Dunes has four!
Jeff: Good luck breaking with convention ... it's that much harder at an existing club.