George,
First, I didn't say Oakmont was great because it was long. I said that one of the reasons it survived was because Oakmont was long. This isn't a new idea on my part. Oakmont was built with the new ball in mind.
Second, Mike is trying to argue that Oakmont "came out of the box" as a great course, at least as compared to what else existed at the time. Read what he has written since the beginning. I agree with you that "Fownes wasn't satisfied with the course as originally built" but view this as more significant that you do. No one, not even Fownes, seems to have thought the original version was anywhere close to a great course, and so how can we go back and say we know better?
Third, you keep saying that the routing is "virtually unchanged" but various articles indicate that there have been changes. And even where the holes are in the same basic place, the holes and greens are sometimes very different. Again this comes from various sources, many of which have been posted by Jim and Sven. Have you read the excellent article written by Schlossman on the changes to the course, linked by Jim? If not, I recommend it. It gives a good sense of how extensive the changes were throughout the early history. When I read contemporaneous articles indicating that by around 1911 there had already been a “thorough remodeling of the links” and that the changes continued long after, I tend to question how much we can lean on fact that the most of the holes are in basically the same location.
In this regard, I keep thinking of the seventh Hole at Rustic Canyon, which was remodeled after flood damage. The tee is in the same place, the green has been shifted slightly, but at least part of the new greensite overlaps with the old green site. The old and new fairways (split) are in roughly the same locations, or at least they'd appear so on a stick routing. If one looked at stick routing from day one and a routing from today, one could say, as you do about Oakmont, that "the routing is almost exactly the same." But the nature of the new hole is entirely different, mostly because the green has been built up, and a different, more aggressive and blatant bunkering scheme has been added, and completely different contours have been inserted. In short, while there is a vague similarity between certain aspects of the old and new, the new hole is fundamentally and unmistakably different.
My point is that because of all the changes to the hole - especially changes to the green - it would unreasonable to judge the quality of the old hole based on the quality of the new old hole. The old and new holes at Rustic were in the same place but they are nothing alike.
As for your questions:
1. I don't think I've read that anyone said the old greens were poor. But Fownes and/or Son were apparently not satisfied with them. As importantly, I don't think we can look at the greens today and infer what they were like in 1905.
2. All 100+ year old courses have had significant work done. But some much more than others.
The thing I keep coming back to is that Oakmont was not widely considered to be a great course when it opened. I was considered to be a good course that was very much a work in progress. Over time, it became a great course. Mike wants to talk about the "architecture" of Oakmont in 1905, but the "architecture" was nowhere near complete. The potential may have been there, but it had yet to be developed.