Pacific Dunes is much more deliberately restrained than Lost Dunes (or Kingsley), at the client's request, and that is just one reason it is appreciated by more people.
Tom,
Can you provide a little insight as to something you lobbied for at Pacific Dunes that Mr. Keiser shot down, or perhaps something significant you would have done differently had it been the same piece of land with a different client (say Mr. Shearer instead)? Did you enact restraint from the get go, or was it a learning process?
At Lost Dunes, aside from the inherent environmental restraints, did you have all the artistic capital you desired?
Josh:
We never had a disagreement about any particular feature at Pacific Dunes. By the time the project started, I had known Mike Keiser for 5 or 6 years, and played or walked around with him at High Pointe, Crystal Downs, Stonewall, Lost Dunes, and Bandon Dunes, plus a bunch of links courses in Northern Ireland. Over that time we talked a lot about what he liked and didn't like, and how in particular he didn't want the greens at Pacific Dunes to be too severe or too controversial; but at the same time I saw that he didn't mind having the same sorts of contours at the edges of the greens. So, we built small to mid-sized greens with any bold contouring mostly at the edges. The learning process was sort of backwards ... we started by constraining ourselves, and then got a bit bolder as we figured out what would be okay with Mike.
Since I knew Mike so well going into the project, I never really thought about doing things differently than that. And the course has been successful enough that it would be pretty pointless to suggest something I might have done differently. The only thing we ever disagreed about was whether to put in more back tees. I resisted on that count, because I didn't think there were opportunities to do it without messing up the natural terrain, and because I thought it was better to keep the course a bit shorter as a balance to the normally windy conditions.
At Lost Dunes, Jeff Shearer handled things a bit differently ... he would come out and look at what we were building, but usually he would have a look by himself and then relay his thoughts or questions to me afterward, instead of walking around with me, as Mike usually did. Jeff did express concern about particular greens along the way, but he always just encouraged me to take a look at it again, and be sure that it wasn't too severe. I changed a couple of things after those conversations, and didn't change a couple of others, most notably #4 green.
The only clients who gave me pretty much unlimited freedom in building their courses are Don Hayden at High Pointe, Richard Sattler at Barnbougle Dunes, and Rupert and Jim O'Neal at Ballyneal. They came out and looked a what we were doing, but were always encouraging and never really questioned anything. I think Mr. Hayden probably wished he had said something more to me, but the others have never looked back with regret, as far as I know.