Mike, Wish I could appreciate your analogies to those courses better, but, I haven't played them so I can't.
After touring both courses at PC last fall, I came away feeling a majority of golfers would prefer the Pines course. That opinion was based on how people feel about Spyglass over Pebble, and what Tyler, the GM at PC, said about the even split of people who prefer which course there. He sited the purists types as preferring the Dunes. Purists are fewer, so that was key in my conclusion.