And honestly, whenever I have put a knob in the middle of the green, most retail golfers (as well as better ones) bitch. Their idea, which is hard to argue, is that if they hit a good putt, it ought to have a predictable roll, i.e., a chance to go in, rather than random deflections that might not distinguish a good putt from a bad one.
It's funny, because Mike Keiser is definitely one of those golfers, but somehow he keeps hiring guys who push to include such features! Maybe, deep down, he understands that you can't sell a more practical but also less interesting course for a premium price?
That is the problem with the premise of this thread: the other half of the equation for 99% of courses is revenues. Bare-ass minimum makes perfect sense if we are talking about a course for a private individual [although they tend to want something better!], but otherwise, any new course has got to compete for customers. It would be much more cost-effective to have more heavily contoured greens and slower green speeds, but if golfers don't want to play slower greens, that's not a solution. And neither is a boring golf course.
Tom,
Well, I don't think Mike K's destination resort model is really more than a one off example, based on my 38 years in the biz, designing mostly near BAM courses for public agencies and management companies.
As to your revenue comments above and in another post, in the last dozen years at least, capitalism has forced 100X more courses to lower prices than raise them in a race to the pricing bottom to hopefully attract golfers. I actually think there are far too many great values, again, for the last dozen years, but maybe we are finally working our way out of that. Very few have even tried to maintain green fees. My take is, if a course is busy enough to justify a fee rise in this environment, kudos to them!
The biggest part of demand is available golfers and rounds in a 10 mile radius. Basically, if there are 100,000 public rounds available in a metro area, and there are 5 public courses, each should get 20K rounds, although, the best conditioned one might get 25K and the worst one only 15K. At that point, they better think in terms of some kind of improvements, usually anyway.
I have seen no study that suggests that any particular design feature actually drives play (other than the obvious like Pebble Beach, Pac Dunes, etc) on the public side. The strong preferences for great design shared among the 1400 on this board extends maybe slightly more. Which brings me back to the idea that while a random hump (Hill's humps?) maybe be seen as great design (and not all golfers agree) for most of the 10K+ public courses, we have to question whether adding 1000 SF of green construction and maintenance cost to it on a BAM course makes sense as the best hazard type to bring interest, or whether other design features might draw players more.
It may be changing, and there is certainly more interest in design now, but I find from comments by golfers, that most are attracted to the pretty holes, good golfers maybe the tough holes (at 1-2% of total) and another 1% to the unusual holes. I actually think the biggest design attraction is still towards signature and "hot" designers, regardless of whether actual design quality is great (even though it usually is pretty good). As with art, golfers don't really know why they like something, but they know when they like something.
As always, JMHO, but I am sincerely trying to mirror whatever I have seen in the biz of moderately priced public courses.