Niall,
If you look at my initial post, I questioned the value of the announced changes, along with an explanation of my thoughts. It would be hard to be more specific without having more detail of the work.
My own experience with Mackenzie & Ebert is quite limited. I have never played any of their original work, and these are the only courses I've played that they have worked on or have announced plans to work on:- Noordwijkse - not sure when this work happened or the specifics
- Deal - returning 16 to a par 5 gets a huge thumbs up
- Dornoch - changes to 7 seemed silly to me
- Porthcawl - not clear on scope of work
- Saunton East - not clear on scope of work
- St. Andrews New - not clear on scope of work
- The Island - sounds like moving from revetted to frilly bunkers (yawn), no strong opinion
- Formby (planned) - the announced changes don't seem to improve the course
- RND (planned) - initial plans seemed to be very misguided wrt to 9
So based on my understanding of changes impacting courses I've played, overall impressions have been positive at Deal only, and negative with Dornoch, Formby, & Westward Ho! In each case, I can articulate why I'm not sold on what's planned or being done. Does this mean I don't view Mackenzie & Ebert positively? No, it means I'm skeptical of the specifics that have been announced. I might be either positive or skeptical with some other courses, but haven't played them or don't know enough about the changes to comment.
Surely I can be allowed to provide a bit of criticism as counterbalance to other discussion of their work? Just look at the laudatory reviews of Hirono, which everyone is seemingly judging based on some great looking photos provided by the firm.
I think M&E are tremendous networkers and marketers. I don't blame them for taking all of the work that they can get. I just hate to see courses get a bit less unique in the name of improvement. I don't feel that the two are mutually exclusive.
M&E are working at Silloth as per another thread earlier this year
Didn't know that - any idea what is being proposed?
Tim
Re: Silloth was mentioned in another thread - Holes 10 and 11 are being redesigned