It is hard for me to be too surprised anymore due to all of the information available here and other places on the web. Nonetheless, I was not expecting anything original at Greyhawk Raptor and found the course to be much more interesting than I anticipated. The fairway bunkers are very large and strategic and give one a very different view than the sameness that generally characterizes desert golf courses.
I supsect the course is old enough that it the typical forumula for such courses had not yet been developed at the time it was built.
Jason,
I like Grayhawk Raptor quite a bit, too, but it's really not all that old as it opened in 1995. The desert golf template, as it were, was very well established by then. (Fazio's Estancia opened the same year and, while typically hovering around the #1 spot in most state rankings, it's very much of the typical desert template.)
I think what makes Raptor different is the relatively flat piece of property where it was built, as opposed to the more typically exposed-on-a-hillside desert courses in north Scottsdale. The course sits low with lots of acacia and mesquite trees around it. You're right that it doesn't feel like most other desert courses, but I think a lot of that was the land and also, perhaps, a deliberate effort by fazio to differentiate it from Estancia and other desert clubs in the area.