Mike O'N:
You're questions and even your speculation about Jones's roll or his feelings about the numerous changes to ANGC while he was alive and around are good ones and more importantly very necessary ones.
It is extremely important where we sit today to accurately chronicle what went on with classic courses of the "Golden Age" in the decades that followed their construction. Not only is it important to chronicle those changes which in many cases (like ANGC) is not particularly difficult to do, but even more importantly to chronicle the the reasons why these courses were constantly altered and most difficult of all the attitudes of those that did it or approved or condoned it.
It does no good where we sit today to condemn these men and the changes they made as some general aberrational destruction of classic architecture that they should have recognized as such and resisted.
We need to know what was going on in their minds and hopefully we will see they did not consider it destructive and corrupting of classic architecture. Of course they could not see the extrapolation of some of what they were doing--they couldn't see the future--they didn't have that luxury!!
But had they had that luxury, as we do today, maybe they wouldn't have done it or at least they might have looked at it differently. At the very least we should try to understand their thinking in their own time, not ours, and you should continue to ask those questions that you asked. If we don't we might continue to look at the history of architecture and its evolution in a revisionist light and I don't think we want to do that and we certainly don't need to do that!
If we look honestly at these men and these courses I think we can pick up accurate patterns of why some courses were extensively changed and others weren't. With ANGC as a case study the first place to concentrate, in my opinion, is the fact that it was and is a "Championship" course with an annual tournament which in and of itself is unusual.
There are other "championship" courses like Cypress and Pine Valley that were never used as such or not at that level and their evolutions are much different.
But we need to look at these things as best we can through the eyes of those that were there in the beginning and on, not through our own eyes!
Keep asking those questions and even speculating on the answers!