Joel,
I haven’t played on kikuyu as much as you have, but I have played on it enough to know that I consider its impact to be overtstated. Let me be clear, I didn’t say *no* impact. I said I think its impact on play to be overstated. Moisture content and the associated firmness in concert with slope have bigger impacts to how a balls reacts on green surrounds, in my opinion.
I think a great redan, which I consider Riv’s version to be, really requires commitment to intent. The best shots I saw were either a high fade or a low draw. They weren’t weak versions of those shots either. Cantlay’s faded 7 wood on Saturday was sky high. Schauffele’s draw on Sunday was pretty low. I think great redans beg for the execution of the selected shot to be very good.
The biggest complaints I saw about the hole was that the GIR was low. Thinking about commitment to the intent of a shot, I’m not sure how changing from kikuyu would change the GIR percentages enough to somehow make the hole palatable to the people making that argument.