Really enjoying this thread on my favorite course. The overheads provide a great perspective on the difference just a smattering of yards can make on approaches into greens. A few observations:
-- One of the things I've always liked about Lawsonia is how the course slowly reveals its charms and challenges. Take the 1st; on the tee, the golfer may wonder: What's the big deal? But then you turn the corner after the drive, and that looming shelf of the 1st green appears, and you know you are in for a treat (a friend of mine, playing the course for the first time, literally said "Holy s..." when he turned that corner). You see this again and again at Lawsonia -- the 2nd, the 4th, the 6th, the 8th, holes 15 and 16 on the back nine. One of the great pleasures of playing Lawsonia is the journey through 18 holes, and the challenges that Langford presents that aren't readily evident on the tee.
-- I also like the ying and yang of the course. Some obvious choices on tee shots, others blind. It's notable to me, at least, that on two holes where the average golfer (or less than average, such as myself) may want to take a healthy swing with a long-iron/fairway wood into the green (holes 2 and 9), Langford presents the golfer with two of his easier green sites, in that they are two that are the least built-up on the course. Langford's writings indicate that he really cared less about par, and a particular hole's length, than he did in demanding that the golfer use a wide variety of clubs in coming into those greens.
-- I'm not entirely sure I agree with Jason's assessment of 3. I've always loved this hole in terms of its setting -- the former dairy barn astride the hole was reputed to the be the largest in the state, and the approach toward the simple white farmhouse has echoes of Hogan's "3-iron into some guy's bedroom window." No hole at Lawsonia encapsulates the course's setting -- rural Wisconsin -- better than the 3rd. But I have long wondered why anyone (other than a truly accomplished player) would want to take on that bunker, because playing away from it seems to leave the player with a less-riskier approach (re. Jason Topp's recent thread on doglegs and how they open up closer to, or away from, fairway hazards). The risk to me seems to outweigh the reward, because it makes the green shallower and one where the fronting bunker must be taken into consideration. Jason's argument is that the fierce tilt of the green provides an advantage (ala Ran's much-derided "catcher's mitt" green design) for an approach shot. I'm not so sure; the tilt of that green has never struck me as all that "fierce" and "aggressive." There are other greens I fear much more at Lawsonia in terms of being in the wrong place.
-- I second Jud's notion of the merits of #4; sometimes it gets lost in the shuffle of the course's par 3s because of the notoriety of the boxcar 7th and the glorious 10th. But it's a great hole. I'll stick with my interpretation of it as Redan-like -- not a true Redan, but it's hard for me to imagine that Langford (a very good golfer in his own right, and one who studied and wrote about golf architecture seriously) didn't at least want to pay some kind of homage to the classic Redan -- and incorporate some of its elements -- when he designed this hole, and placed it where he did in the routing. No proof of course, but the circumstantial evidence is strong enough for me to hold to my view in calling it Redan-like.