Ben Sims,
You crack me up. If you have no interest in discussing the topic why do you find it necessary to post multiple times on the thread? Just to tell everyone you don't want to participate? Do you think they care or, do you have other motivations? Have you been deputized by Ran to be the thread police? Pointing out to everyone which topics are worthy of their time and discussion and which ones aren't? If you haven't been deputized by Ran then you are exhibiting an astonishing level of self-righteousness. I suggest in the future, if you don't like the way my or anyone else's threads are introduced that you just refrain from posting in them because I really don't care what you think of my threads or whether you deem them worthy.
Furthermore, and to Jim Nugent as well, my entire first post including the title of the thread was a string of questions. Questions are not assertions nor are they statements. Questions are posed so that they can be answered. I didn't "respond to Tom's points" because I was asking to learn, not stating an opinion and wanting to debate it. Thankfully, I've learned a lot of cool stuff on this thread. Unfortunately, I've also learned that some people have much more of an interest in attacking a person than they do having a conversation about golf course architecture; that they'd rather spend multiple posts telling me they don't like my "style" rather than just ignore a thread they don't have interest in.
Finally, if this thread dies with informative and thought provoking posts from the likes of Tom Doak, Bob Crosby, Peter Pallotta, Sean Arble, Mike Hendren, Bill McBride, Mac Plumart and Eric Smith then I have learn and gotten as much from this thread than I could have ever expected when I posed those (emphasis added) QUESTIONS.