First off, there are pins in golf because a ton of golfers call them pins. If Joe wants to tend the flagstick, fine, I'll tend the pin, thank you very much. Every time this comes up someone has to come here and scold everyone for saying what almost everyone says. BFD, flag, pin, hole, cup, whatever...its the thing we aim at.
Secondly, this whole set up argument gets old too. If you want your course set up with some thought you need to do two things.
1) Hire a golf course manager, not a turf manager. It helps a lot if they also like to play a little themselves (and are allowed to taste the cooking).
2) Live with the fact that once in a awhile it'll be over the top. You can't have interest everyday without pushing and once in a while we push too hard. Getting yelled at because of some "illegal" pin will quickly douse the fire to keep it interesting.
It is a bummer when things get watered down. For all the wonder and praise of Bandon, I think they should be called on the fact that they like to push the tees all the way forward and keep the set up geared toward quick and easy play. Mr. Kaiser is right and every supt knows it, a player who scores well is happier then one who doesn't, but it was a blast to play in the Ren cup last year and see some cool hole locations. To bad its so rare and I hope that someday that policy is loosened up a bit. Mr Kaiser certainly gets it right most of the time, but for 250+ a round, the player ought to see the "real" golf course.