What a great thread. Unbelievable phone photos, but it was the passion of the described experience that was most moving. Thanks to Eric, Chris, and others for opening our eyes and minds.
Warning: self indulgent rant follows. Hit page down key and move on.
I don’t have a clear sense about the physical design changes that have occurred at DR and how these have improved the course. But I do know from long experience that all golf courses evolve continuously. Purely from a personal point of view, my opinions about golf and golf courses are also continuously evolving, especially since I started reading a few yards of books, traveling to see other courses, and reading the opinions of others on this site and elsewhere. For example, renovations I did 10-12 years ago and thought were really cool looking, embarrass my aesthetics today.
Perhaps because I get to leave my armchair and fool around in the dirt (as an owner, not as a designer, clearly I’m guilty of tinkering), I find it impossible to imagine building a golf course and getting everything perfectly right. I also think it’s impossible to work on such a large canvass, no matter how well everyone else loves the result, without wishing some things had been done differently. Over time, courses, opinions, and people change and experiences accumulate (repeat plays). So, it seems entirely reasonable to me that the various visceral reactions to DR expressed here (mostly based on one or a couple of plays) would be so widespread.
Given the complexity of building a golf course, I am in awe of anyone who can put together a team of talented folks and create a course that is so beautiful and enjoyable that one is emotionally overwhelmed. There are a few designers admired here that have done that time and again. They deserve our admiration for their talent, creativity, expertise, and the pleasure they have given us. They’re our heroes and mentors. However, it sometimes seems my own opinions (and others on here) are unduly influenced by a sort of conventional “group thinking” that can get skewed by too many design clichés and too much hero worship at the expense of being able to appreciate good work from designers of lesser, or in this case greater, reputations or commercial appeal.
I don’t read the rating threads here. I’m much more interested in people’s gut reactions about the experience of playing a course, as Eric so eloquently put it near the start of this thread. When pressed to explain why he felt as he did, those specific things he liked were precisely the same things another questioned. Fair enough, we all react differently to our own emotions, aesthetics, and our evolving opinions. Yet, it was refreshing to read this discussion because it remained positive and open minded to other opinions and, to a great extent, didn’t break down into haggling over our individual biases.
Thanks to all of my fellow golf nutcases for making my time here as enjoyable as reading this thread, and please feel free to call me a sentimental, long-winded moron.