TEP That's a tougher cat to skin. First of all it's a partnership C & C. I have yet to see a Ben Crenshaw course. Plus, the method of producing their courses is akin to a D/B although employing outside contractors for some/all of the work, I believe (speculating) they have an on-site crew.
In many of the histories of their projects, it seems that Bill Coore spends the initial time with the property to ascertain if/what course they will build. With this partnership, clearly the sum is greater than the parts. If I were a betting man, I would believe that given the 2 separately, on the same site, Coore's result would be closer than Crenshaw's to what a C & C would be.
It's one thig to have ideas, another to be able to convy those in a manner to get them prosecuted. And to be able to coherently formulate the concept when nothing exists. It's been my experience that some who claim to be GCA's, merely comment upon the foundation begun by others. For example, Morrish and Weiscopf. A pretty good partnership, but after they broke up??? How many Tom Weiscopf solo courses are notable? But Jay went on to do some.
Unfortunately, with Pro Golfers, it's easier to assess. Palmer (F. Duane then Ed Seay, now Eriic Larsen), Nichlaus (Muirhead, Dye, Morrish, Cupp...) etc. Many top name GCA's have had very good underlings for years, but no one really knows how they function. The Jones (all 3 - too many to list), Fazio (Fry, Banfield, Marzolf), but, in their case, they all did the work at one time but gradulated to rainmaker status - much like a Senior partner at a big law firm.
I guess one way to look at it is...if let to their own demize, could they produce without anyone else. My guess is that Ben might be able to by now - I'm sure he picked up enough along the way. But, in the beginnig, if he could, there probably wouldn't be a Coore around now.
JUD, seems like your judgement the architectual merits of Barefoot were highly influenced by the conditioning - something the architects might have little control. Was it that the poor manitenance was influenced by the difficulty of the architecture or are they just skimping in hard times? Did you play any other Barefoot courses with better maintenance? I know when I played Fazio and Dye, Dye was in much worse shape and I told Pete he'd better get on the horn because I liked his course better but Joe Six-Pack would probably tell his friends how much better Fazio was, just on maintenance alone.