Brian
I suspect you may be right re Pine Valley being forever #1, but I am not sure I agree with your reasons.
Pine Valley is apparently pretty damn good.
While the course is undoubtedly pretty damn good as you say, so are many others, and a just claim could be made for the Old Course or for Sand Hills or for Cypress Point or for....
I think the hard part is getting to the top of the hill, but once there, it is damn hard to get dislodged. Tradition and inertia go a very long way to maintaining the status quo.
There will never be another architect (or club) that takes 4-6yrs to scout, route, design and build their course.
You may be right, but somehow I doubt it. I suspect there will always be wealthy people who are willing to spend whatever it takes and take as long as it takes to make it just so. Sorta like Bandon, or the European Club. Would Sand Hills have been better if C&C had taken longer? Maybe? Do archies still go back and make modifications as needed?
Quirk is dead in modern golf, and ultimately all great courses have quirk
As much as we both love Tobacco Road, this must be wrong, 'cause they don't get much quirkier
But the better point may be that modern quirk perhaps is not appreciated, but if it is on an old course it is a selling point (i.e. hitting over the 'rail sheds' on the Road Hole, or the Windmill at NGLA etc)
Patience is no longer a virtue, so the absolutely need to get a course ranked, rated, review, disected, evaluated, photographed, marketed will override any allowance of a "grace-period" to let the course grow in, adapt to playability, solve drainage/growing issues, etc...
Yeah, probably true, along with the issue of getting the product to market quicker to start the cash register ringing. But I can easily envision, as I said above, exceptions to this rule. Perhaps TDoak can actually add something to this area, whether he feels he can always take all the time he wants etc.