Interesting stuff from the above-linked article:
"...Wilson can be as outspoken about golf courses, even the most admired ones. "All they've got up there," he says of the Augusta National, "is the Masters. They've done a fine job with that, but they don't really have much of a golf course. Number one, there's too much demand for putting on those big, rolling greens. A fellow can be playing real good, but if he doesn't have his putting touch he'll score very badly. It's scenic, and the short holes are fine—the 12th and the 16th are two of the best holes in golf—but the par 5s aren't par 5s, they're 4�s. Also the golf course never plays its length unless the weather is bad. If they played that tournament at any other time of year but spring you'd have awfully low scores.
" Oakmont? It's one of the most unattractive courses I've ever seen," Wilson says of the site of this year's U.S. Open. "It looks as if it had been built by an amateur. If I had it to rebuild, I'd take out all those sharp lines that don't conform to the surrounding countryside. That first hole, for instance, it's like hanging out a window. You just hit your shots straight out in front of you. Oakmont is like a girl in a wrong dress," he concluded, resorting to his favorite clich�.
Wilson feels there are only two truly great established golf courses in the U.S. They are Pine Valley in Clementon, N.J., designed by George Crump in 1920 and considered to be one of the most demanding courses in the world and Merion, just outside of Philadelphia, the surprisingly successful work of an amateur architect named Hugh Wilson (no relation). They both exemplify theories of golf-course building that Wilson feels are vitally important. Behind them Wilson would place the No. 2 course in Pinehurst, N.C. and Shinnecock in Southampton, N.Y.
"A golf course should look more vicious to the player than it actually is," he says. "It should inspire you, keep you alert. If you're playing over a sleepy-looking golf course, you're naturally going to fall asleep. Pine Valley is a good example of what I mean. If I had to pick any course in the world to play someone at match play I'd pick this one. It looks a lot scarier than it is. I'd just go along playing the course and let the other fellow scare himself right out of the match."
Merion, however, is the course that has most thoroughly influenced Dick Wilson's work, just as it did Bill Flynn's. It is not excessively long—6,700 yards—and there are only one or two potential disaster holes, but Merion requires intense thought and concentration all the way around, Wilson says.
"A golf course should require equal use of every aspect of the game, rather than make a disproportionate demand on one or two phases, such as driving or putting," says Wilson. Merion does this..."
Wilson seems to me to epitomize prevailing attitudes about gca during the 1950's and '60's, a period sometimes called the "Dark Ages". RTJ's comments in the piece are a bit more subtle, though I wonder if RTJ didn't succumb later in his career to the same tough guy approach to 'balanced' shot testing.
Bob