Matt,
First of all, you don't have to pull punches with me. My opinions are just that, and since I put them out there for public consumption, they are free game.
I understand that you believe Colonial to be vastly overrated. My comment was that it is one of the best in a state not known for its great courses. Having said that, I too think that it is overrated, though in my book it is a top 100, well down on the page. And you and I know that from say 50 - 250, the relative differences are very small and most highly subjective.
Without going on a hole by hole comparison, Harbour Town to Colonial, I find that the latter has more variety, it is better bunkered, and requires a better short game to score well. One way to play HT, specially on the long holes, is to hit short of the greens and chip up for par. This is much harder to do at Colonial because of the deep, tight bunkers and higher profile greens
Both courses have small greens, but Colonial, for the most part, has more width and possible angles of approach. BTW, I've played Colonial 20+ times, and Harbour Town 5+. So if I am full of it, it is due to a lack of sohphisticated discernment, not experience.
I do believe that Dallas National is several notches above Colonial, and I look forward to see where it debuts on the various lists.
Dorse,
I like Southern Oaks a lot. It is another excellent daily-fee course in the south Dallas/Tarrant counties area where, unfortunately, the demographics just won't support so many of them. It is my understanding that it was for sale last year for around $4MM, or about 50 cents on the dollar. I do like the old style pushed-up greens and small, free-flowing, deep bunkers. From the back tees, it is very difficult, particularly the closing four or file hole stretch. Why it cost so much to build, nobody really knows. It does have some bad soil, and the terrain is rather boring in areas.
I don't know that much about what "Brooksie" (as they used to call him at Colonial) is doing. He did some work at Walnut Creek CC in Mansfield which is not held in very high regard. He managed the old Carswell AFB course in Fort Worth for a time, and I believe he did some changes there. That course has been totally redone by John Colligan, a former Brauer associate, and is now Hawks Creek. It is my understanding that the Colonial CC membership liked it so much that the club tried to buy it from the redevelopment authority.
Tom Doak,
My comments to you were a little toungue-in-cheek. But I've been around enough some of your colleagues/peers to gather that opinions of "lay people" do not seem to carry much weight. I am just not aware of that many industries where what the consumer thinks is summarily dismissed. I play with an architect friend 10 times a year, and all I have to do is suggest how he might have done something differently to get a rise out of him. Unfortunately, he plays better mad, so I normally wait till the 19th hole to give it to him. Come to think of it, he hasn't called me lately.
Tom Ross,
Apparently you haven't been around gca.com long. Tom Doak is "in"; a poster boy of this site. Everybody loves his stuff, and since he gives us a bit of his very valuable time, he is somewhat sheltered. If I was Tom Doak, I would gladly accept criticism, deserved and otherwise, from people who get around the country playing a variety of golf courses. Hopefully, his head is not so pumped up with such threads as "in praise of Tom Doak", that he doesn't appreciate that some good ideas may reside outside of his own nogin.
If you really want to see aggressive posts (some would say offensive and defammatory), please research the archives under Fazio, Nicklaus, Rees Jones, ASGCA, Pascuzzo (sp), and several others. Not that these guys know anything, or really care what we think.