Ben - I suspect the proposed Ebert sequence is partially to get rid of the spaghetti junction of crossovers that house 2 to 3, 8 to 9 and 11 to 12. In that sense it works quite well. But I’m not convinced by going down 11 to come straight back up 3 and I’m fed up with this obsession with finding any spare piece of land as an excuse to build a new par-3.
Why could they not consider reverting to the original Simpson sequencing of holes? What was wrong that had to be changed?
Maybe they are adding a par-3 so they could correct Simpson and get the short holes going in four different compass directions. 
I'm sure Ben would be on board with that.
Tom,
I had heard that the sequence changed when the clubhouse position moved. But I've found no record of the supposed original clubhouse position, nor has any member I've talked to heard of it. There was definitely no sign of it in the 60's and the sequence wasn't changed until the 80's. Even with the current clubhouse, the old 18th green (current 10th) is closer than the present 18th (old 17th).
The original sequence had the same junction of three crossovers. Potentially it could have felt more natural in Simpson's time and new back tees have made it felt busier but I doubt that would have had much impact. I have never had a problem with those crossovers whatsoever. Always obvious where to walk.
I know you were being tongue-in-cheek but they can't even pull the orientation card out of their deck; because the new par-3 points the same way as two of the existing ones, meaning three from four will now face south.
Niall: There are two problems with "safety":
1. There is - deliberately - no definitive way of measuring what is unsafe versus what is safe. It is easy to fall on either side of the fence with many examples.
2. There are a lot of older courses with areas that are easy to call unsafe by modern standards that were not deemed unsafe 100 years ago. These areas have generally proven to have no problems but just don't meet the modern (unwritten) safety gaps and buffers. As soon as you do work in that area (or even comment on it), you have to judge it by modern standards. If a club is looking to work in an area, I may recommend against it if modern safety standards are awkward to meet (unless safety was the driver for the work). All safety discussions I firstly do off the record so we can consider together what is best. I will only put something in writing if I genuinely believe there is danger to golfers or the public. But you'll find that the clubs themselves know better than I do where they have been encountering problems. If I was asked to do a formal "safety audit" across whole courses, I'd be recommending making multiple changes to almost all the best links courses in the country. The majority of those changes would be - in my opinion - unnecessary.