I have generally found that life's most important and meaningful opportunities for growth and learning have been when I or someone around me has fallen short of "ideal". As a surgeon who does the same procedure 1000 times a year, I find that it is the challenging cases that teach me, including those that unfortunately go in a less than ideal fashion. I am told that I am too hard on myself when I obsess over the imperfect cases even when the final result is perfect or nearly-so (they are successes despite the shortcomings...not because of them). Of course, discussing where I felt short of ideal isn't easy and can be difficult. But, I know that no one, no surgeon, no procedure is entirely perfect. It is a fact of life.
Only discussing the positives of a golf course surely is not a thorough analysis and likely misses a least some opportunities for learning. I do understand that this website has struggled to display frank criticism in a thoughtful, kind and respectful manner. That fact, however, is a practical one...and theoretically speaking, pointing out compromises should (or at least could) be a valuable part of the exercise. Isn't that one of the strengths of the Confidential Guide? Even Ran seems to be unwilling to write anything but positives in his wonderful course profiles, so perhaps we should follow his lead. But it seems to provide only part of the whole picture.
Bart:
Thanks for your post.
My difficulty is the presumption that anything not conforming to the textbooks is a "compromise" from the ideal, and that those "compromises" must drag the course DOWN in some way. [You almost recognized it in the first paragraph above -- you were about to admit that the challenging cases are the ones where you've done your best work, but then lamented that they hadn't gone perfect.]
Those difficult cases might be my best work. I often think you only need a really great surgeon when things don't go smoothly (the difficulty with this statement is that with a really great surgeon things go smoothly more often). BUT even if those were my best work, those difficult cases would not be the best operations I have done. The best ones are the ones that don't deviate from the ideal at all. Smooth sailing, perfect incision to perfect conclusion. The difference, of course, is that surgery has the same desired outcome every time and good golf course architecture should be unique. So, I think in some ways we can compare and some we can't.
I do think it is key to note that when someone feels an architect deviates from an ideal that doesn't mean it wasn't the architect's best work or that, by deviating, the architect compromised the result. In fact, that compromise might have allowed the best possible result under the circumstances the architect faced.
I had a high school principal who always said that if your child was at best a B student and he/she was getting Bs, he/she was a winner. That you had to judge in context. But of course, that B student wasn't the best student in the class.
Let's ask this:
Scenario 1:
you got a job/property/set of constraints that meant the very best you or anyone else could do was a Doak7 but you found a novel solution to produce an even better course than anyone thought possible and you built a Doak 8
vs.
Scenario 2:
You got a nearly dream property that had few if any restraints (a Doak 9 job), and you built a Doak 9 course
Which course did you do your best work? If someone was analyzing the courses, should they give you more credit for Scenario 1 or for Scenario 2? Would someone be wrong to point out the limitations of Course 1 so as to say that Course 2 was the better course?
I might understand why you would feel scenario 1 is your best work, but I would still be inclined to choose Scenario 2 as your best work because I would never understand how great you did in Scenario 1 (just like you likely could never understand how I was able to turn a complicated surgery into a nearly great result).
Anyway, thanks again for the inspiring thoughts.
Bart