Tom,
I don’t really care too much about the rankings, and I don't think you do either. My point is there are current highly regarded golden age courses that were off everyone's radar not to long ago. Everyone knew about the iconic benchmark courses , but there was a healthy collection of really good courses that we just simply forgot about. Now we're a generation later and the lost courses are from the 1940-1980, just like likes some classic courses that were forgotten 20 or 30 years ago.
More golf courses were built in the 50' and 60’s than any prior decade and there was little slowdown in the 70’s and 80’s. I don’t believe the post war courses are better on average than classic courses but based on the shear number of courses built, more than just a few should be worthy of discussion and recognition.
Sure sites on average may have been less than stellar, but we're not looking for average. We're looking for the best. Based on shear numbers, some courses had to be built on good land. I threw out a 50 year period that saw a monumental golf construction boom in America. If you pick a course at random it was most likely built during this period, but yet it’s hard to come up with the best 50 of the time? It’s a huge blind spot in the current study of golf architecture.
I know professionally it makes more sense right now to bash these courses. The big money clubs are usually classic courses, better to praise them and their design features in the quest of the next renovation job. The current trend in renovations is to “fix” the mistakes of the post war era. Perfectly understandable, it’s a business after all. But if any group of people can see past such a bias and just evaluate courses for their architecture merit its this site. I believe in the GCA membership. Some of these courses are good, lets find them and help to make them better.
As for Prairie Dunes, there is a thread on here questioning if every hole at Prairie Dunes should not be considered the best on the course. Maybe it can, maybe it can’t. But if its even a discussion, it means the holes built in the 50’s are pretty darn spectacular. Are those really the only 9 holes built in the 50’s worth analyzing their merits? Surely there are more.