Sorry, Brock, 0 for 3...
Thanks, Jim, and in turn your mention of the tee-less Ballyneal resonated with me too (also from afar). I think especially because it's Tom's course, as SV is C&C's -- architects who love & praise St. Andrews as the epitome of design.
I've always assumed that, for 100+ years thoughtful critics/observers have celebrated The Old in large part because of its variability, i.e. one golf course and set of questions and challenges and options when the wind blows this way, another kind of course and wholly different set of challenges/options when it blows the other, or more fiercely, or when the course is very dry and playing hard & firm & fast.
Yes, you have 'freedom' at Ballyneal without prescribed tees and 'freedom' too at SV with 6 sets of tees, but I'd suggest that it is a very different kind of freedom than what St Andrews has offered all these years.
At the former courses, it is the 'freedom' to feel a strong wind in your face and move up a set of tees so you can hit a 6 iron into that Par 3 instead of a 2 iron, or to move further back when the wind is behind you and the course is firm & fast and you're afraid that, wanting to hit driver all day long, you might on this day actually reach the fairway bunker that's 280 yards out; in other words, it is the freedom to ignore the architecture completely, if and when it suits you.
At the latter, on the other hand, it is the freedom to try to make the best & smartest choices you can so as to shoot your lowest possible score on this specific golf course and on this particular day; in other words, the freedom to enjoy and embrace the architecture, even if it doesn't suit you.
With the former you have the faux freedom of a constantly-satisfied ego -- which is in fact (and as better men than me have long recognized) a very subtle but powerful kind of slavery. With the latter, you have the true freedom to respond to 'the world' as it is and as you find it -- no matter how challenging, or how unsuited/unprepared you are to meet those challenges, and no matter how 'unfair' it is.
And if I got on a high horse (oh, what fun
) I'd suggest that the former is the 'freedom' of children and of narcissists (or of those who, for 10 rounds a year, want to tap into their childish narcissistic sides), while the latter is the freedom of true golfers!
The spirit of the game used to be: 'play the golf course as you find it and the ball as it lies'. Has it now instead become for so very many: 'make the course up as you go along, and play the ball any way that you like'?
'The customer is always right', is that it? Especially when that customer is willing and able to pay you jolly boatloads of money, and so expects & demands to be 'always right'?
Peter