Adrian,
I'm led to believe, and my knowledge literally begins and ends with the Arble Tour, that your Orange course is pretty good and yet possibly not exactly revered by your members. I am not disputing what people currently like, simply why they like it. People, as I said before, like what they think they are supposed to like, and I'm afraid in that regard I do rather subscribe to the whole TV golf mentality thing. As I equally said before, golfers likes these things because, in part at least, they associate it with something quite classy, quite aspirational. It follows then that as soon as you begin to promote something different and promote it not simply as an alternative but as the classy alternative, people begin to change their perspectives. It's not easy because there's a whole big industry telling them the very opposite of what you and I might prefer and we remain a tiny minority. Watch five minutes of golf on Sky and the usual drivel will begin to spew out. Most people are conformists, plain and simple. Ewen et al aren't then about to start rocking the boat. I almost fell off my chair when I heard Gary Player, a man I don't usually have much time for, expressing the brilliance of wide open fairways in Australia recently. The average golfer just doesn't hear that usually so we can't be surprised that they profess to like what they like. As I said, I'd like that if I knew of nothing else. I'm not immune to advertising, nor is anyone else. And even knowing what I do, I'd still play bad golf if it was that or nothing at all. At the end of the day, my argument in all of this is not that the average golfer is having a bad time, simply that he or she could be having a better time. And I don't see why we, as people that apparently understand the options available, shouldn't be doing all we can to offer those options. That in itself isn't about forcing people to like what we like, it's simply about levelling the playing field so they can make an informed choice. And you can't make an informed choice if you're not sufficiently exposed to the choices.
I'm sure that lack of exposure to choices was as evident for you as it was for me when you had conversations with average golfers about Pinehurst. Again, if you've never been exposed to choice, why wouldn't you naturally assume that Pinehurst was all wrong. No one ever told you that was a choice so you just assume it must be wrong.
On a not completely unrelated note, and I've done this one before so apologies for those that have heard it, my time in a Pro Shop saw me work through a particularly dry summer. It was incredible just how many people came into the shop to tell me how they had just had the most enjoyable round of the year, only to finish with, Pavlov's Dogs style, "but it was a bit dry." It was literally an involuntary comment I heard time and time again. When I would explain, and I absolutely always would, that their enjoyment was a direct consequence of it being "a bit dry" you could see them trying to process the information and I thought "does not compute" might just pop out of a few mouth.
And since it's my cliche du jour, humble golf is usually good golf. Ergo, this has nothing to do with affordability or snobbery, not on my part anyway. Actually, the choices for ordinary golfers I referred to before are all about the very opposite of elitism. Those choices, in my little egalitarian world, should be choices for all. I've said it a million times but the worst courses, for me at least, are usually the middle bracket courses which are desperately trying to be something they're not, i.e. desperately trying to be Augusta and constraining themselves in the process.