Ben:
My problem with your harping in this thread is that it seems like you think I should do something that YOU would like, instead of doing something someone else [like, say, my clients] would like. Whatever I do with the rest of my career, it will be because I think it's fun, not because you do.
Here's a summary of my last few projects, from my own perspective:
At The Loop we built an 18-hole fully reversible course. That was pretty new, for me anyway. Have you seen a better attempt?
At The National in Australia we took the least favorite course of the members, changed the routing, and made it their favorite. 95% of the earthmoving was to erase the work done by the first designers!
At Memorial Park we took a heavy clay site, built a course with 17 non-frilly bunkers, and kept the Tour players in check on a municipal golf course that does 62,000 rounds per year. I actually got a couple of prominent Tour players to admit that hitting fairways matters there! If you think it doesn't look cool that's fine, because the assignment was not about what it looked like.
At St. Patrick's we took a great site and built one of the best courses in the world. Anything less would have been a failure. That's not as easy as it looks, by the way; Ally took a long look at that job, too, but I don't hear him saying he'd have done better.
At Lido we re-created a course that's been gone for 80 years. Has anyone else done that?
At Sedge Valley we are trying to build a world-class course with a par of 68. I'm not sure that has ever been done before, honestly -- when Rye and Swinley Forest and Wannamoissett were built, they were thought of as "bogey 74". It is a deliberate attempt to try and reverse the direction toward ever-bigger and ever more wasteful courses.
I have no interest in building square greens. How in God's name do you consider that creative? It would be more in keeping with very old-school courses to not be able to discern any shape or edge to the green.
I'd love to build a course with very small greens, but I can't get a superintendent to agree. They think anything under 5000 sf will cause them trouble. I keep trying.
I would love to do a course with lots of railway sleepers, but every client thinks that's crazy talk. It is too heavily identified with Mr. Dye, in America at least.
I think I'm going to do one or two projects in 2024 [in America] with artificial-turf revetted bunkers and try to make them as good as Muirfield's and St. Andrews's bunkers . . . I'm going to have to find a really good intern to tackle this.
We still aren't sure what we are going to do at Cabot Highlands, style-wise. We've discussed the possibility of building zero bunkers, or a few blowouts but zero formalized / green side bunkers . . . we could make it challenging enough without them, but then most people here wouldn't know what to talk about. [Much like your problem with Memorial Park.]
What you should take away from this summary is that we try to do something different on EVERY project we do, without looking desperate in the process. And for the most part, it has been pretty successful, despite your protestations.