Jeff,
You write: "I stand by two statements of opinion I have made in this thread - It's hard to do a double fairway hole that doesn't gain a preferred route over time, and it may not be possible to do a restoration and apply for a major tournament on the same course."
Agreed, I've always felt it would be very difficult to restore #8 with the trees the way they are, the hazards sterilized at Riviera and the trouble of balancing all of the elements involved in making the options at least somewhat tempting. If attempted, the double fairway certainly should at least make the players consider their options, but even that did not occur. And sadly, amateur armchair architects spotted this problem coming as soon as the work was finished, so why couldn't the experts see it coming?
And you are right, throw in the wacky ideas from Far Hills, and restoration is next to impossible when a major championship is involved. Yet, in most cases, someone is willing to take the job (sometimes for free?!?), make the compromises necessary, and seemingly have few regrets in labeling the work as something it's not.
So in that light, I can't sympathize with the architect who is "charged with this responsibility," particularly when it's not the firm's specialty and they are offering their services for free. If the architect senses the project is not something that it's being portrayed as, he has to step up and clarify what is being done and why, and it will cut down on much of this criticism. Instead, the "restoration" shield is thrown up to attain praise, adulation and greater name recognition, and plenty of people buy it. But the bold statements about Thomas's vision having been restored are insulting declarations to others when you see things in print like the proposition that restoring the right fairway will free up the left side fairway for corporate tents. It's just sad that so many higher-ups in golf get so enamored with free advice and one week of tournament golf, that they forget about honesty, integrity and the long term enjoyment of the course.
So I think the criticism has been quite fair and will be even more dramatic if the next wave of redesign goes forward and is portrayed as restoration.
Geoff