Tom - re your post #5.
As an architect you respect the course very much. As a very casual/outside observer, I have to admit that I don't. And I think you have helped me understand why.
As a professional, you admire how well the routing puzzle was put together, and how tightly/smartly it was done given the limited space/acreage. But a hobbyist, what I see (as a result of this limited space) is a 'busy' design, and a 'cluttered' aesthetic, and an 'complicated' kind of architecture.
As if by necessity given the site, I find (in pictures and on television) that the course has very little of the elegant/modest simplicity that I like so much, either in design or aesthetic -- very little there seems to drape casually (as if accidentally) over the land or to emerge organically/naturally out of the natural site itself. In short, I can't help but see the hand (and overly-cerebral mind) of man all over the course, both from the architectural and maintenance perspective
The course seems too chock-full of all manner of rough and bunkers and cross hazards, as if those who had a hand in the original design process somehow felt that they had lost much (and/or not accomplished enough) in squeezing 18 holes into 120 acres, and began right away to add bunkers and to narrow fairways and to add 'challenge' to the course in a process that has continued right up until today.
I can well understand -- in the context of my view/this theory - Hugh Wilson taking his trip to the UK after the routing was in place, since perhaps in his mind the course wouldn't have been enough of a course based solely on the site, the routing and the greens alone.
All this is guess work, of course, and this guess work comes from just a casual observer. But what I'm suggesting is that, despite the success and praise for a course like Merion, perhaps 120 acres really isn't enough room to create a top notch 18 hole course in America - not unless one commits oneself to the ongoing time and money and effort and inputs and extra features that Merion did.
Peter
PS - no need for anyone to remind me that Merion is universally revered and always has been and that it features prominently in the world atlas of golf and that hundreds of more experiences observers would strongly disagree with me and that the course has successfully hosted riveting major championships and humbled the greatest golfers of all time. I readily admit my problem with the course is mine, not the course's.