I come here not to defend The Architects Golf Club, but to explain some of it. For better or worse, I convinced Stephen Kay that we should present holes in chronological order, to give golfers a feel for the evolution of the game. (I also wanted the first couple of holes unirrigated, but that's another story.) Stephen wanted to start with Old Tom, I felt it only right to finish with Trent Jones (who died early in the design stage). It was strictly coincidence that Macdonald/Raynor & Banks all ended up as par 3 holes. The eighth is indeed the "weakest" hole, but hard to come up with an uphill par 3 that's going to dazzle anybody. Raynor did do multiple level greens, by the way, and we put one there for visibility. Nothing on the hole turned out quite as geometric as I'd hope, and the "Christmas trees" to the right were planted by the owners concerned about safety. I'm lobbying to have them transplanted elsewhere. The sixth hole (Colt & Alison) green may be too large for a short downhill hole, but this is a public course, and a small green would get beat to hell with ballmarks. Course architecture is mainly about compromise. I do have an idea about how to lengthen the hole, but, seriously, what's wrong with giving the average golfer one par 3 he'll actually hit in one and have a chance at a birdie? Miss that green, by the way, and you won't feel it's that easy. The deepest bunkers on the course are on that hole. As for the "Redan", if you'd read the yardage book closely, you'd note that, while Stephen wanted to create a faithful Redan, I convinced him to do something different (Redans are a dime a dozen), so we went with a slight punchbowl green that Charlie Banks built on many of his courses. I think it makes it a much better golf hole. (A Redan doesn't work that well on a downhill par 3. See Black Creek, for example.) Matt Ward may be correct that the Trent Jones hole is "mediocre" (just 400 yards from the back - the routing wouldn't allow for anything longer) but there's always two schools of thought as far as closing holes - one that the 18th should be a ballbusting par 4, the other that it should be a match-play ending short one. In the case of Architects, it's the latter. I'm hoping this hole will get heavily planted with trees (leaving the rest of the course wide open) to reflect the Trent Jones era of excessive tree planting and to someday make it a hemmed-in 400 yard par 4. I appreciate all comments and dissections of the course. Having dished it out for so many years, I now have to learn to take it. Oh yeah, why no Langford, Willie Park, etc. Hey, we only had 18 holes. We chose Emmet , Travis, Hugh Wilson and a couple of others because Stephen was more familiar with their architecture (and a fan of it) and because we thought we should highlight a few more East Coast designers because most of the clientele will be East coasters. (I had at one time proposed that we concentrate only on designers that had actually worked in New Jersey, but that would have precluded Mackenzie and a couple of others. Not George Thomas, though. )