Paul hit it on the head while I was typing. Here's what I was writing:
With regard to Ran's initial post, and Greg Tallman's, the simple answer is not so much that I've never had the right site to build something like Muirfield, but that I've never had a CLIENT who would want me do bunkering as dastardly as Muirfield's. Mr. Keiser's view at Bandon was that Americans would not enjoy having to pitch out sideways from bunkers -- and he is probably right about that, in general -- so he limited David Kidd on the use of revetted bunkers, and made it clear to us that he preferred not to go that direction. If he reversed course and said he wanted to build a course like Muirfield in Wisconsin, I'd love to try; but my guess is that's unlikely to happen.
Second, if you have bunkering as severe as Muirfield [or Royal County Down, to name another course that Ran likes a bit better], you are not going to combine that with over-the-top green contours. It would all be too much. So, I don't expect those courses to have the wild greens I otherwise enjoy. But, since no one wants me to do bunkering that severe, my green contours sometimes make up for it in testing the golfer.
Third, no, The Renaissance Club did not emulate Muirfield directly, even though most people would find it quite restrained compared to my other courses. [Indeed, the people from Scotland who have played it are generally surprised and pleased that it doesn't try to be dramatic, when half the property was fairly flat. Unfortunately, the few who have played it and posted here, have hardly played any of my other courses to make the comparison.] Certainly, though, the LAST thing one would do when building next door to one of the great courses of the world would be to try and mimic it too closely. So, The Renaissance Club is not like Muirfield [and doesn't have a Redan hole either], Sebonack is not like National [and doesn't have a Redan hole either], Pacific Dunes is not like Bandon Dunes [but does have a Redan, partly because Bandon didn't], etc. None of that was too hard to do, since the properties were all totally different than the neighboring course.
Fourth, the key to Muirfield's bunkering is the great craftsmanship of the sod wall features and the way that no two are alike. That would be very very hard to pull off on a new course, because you don't build the sod walls when you are shaping and planting the course; you generally go back in during the grow-in and build those features. Most of the sod wall work at The Renaissance Club was done by the maintenance crew there [including guys who'd worked at Gullane and Muirfield], but done when none of my guys or I was around ... we only left instructions, and made a couple of visits as the work progressed. To rely on sod wall bunkering for the character of your design, you'd have to be ready to spend a lot more time on site at the very end of the project.
Last but not least, I do agree with Peter Pallotta. In all our best work there comes a time to throw out the "intention" of the design and just roll with what's working. Muirfield only got the way it is because it evolved, over the work of several designers, giving lots of time for those great bunker features to evolve and be added to. Such evolution does not always result in better and better design -- indeed, usually not -- but on the rare occasion where it does, there's no modern design that can compete with that right out of the gate. I do have the utmost respect for that.