I had the chance to play this Mike Strantz course in Providence Forge, VA over the weekend. (Didn't have a camera along, sorry.) I found the course difficult, at times puzzling, and thoroughly enjoyable to play.
The course plays 6965/ 74.9/144 from the back tees (I played one set forward), and is a challenge from the first shot through the rather incongruent 18th hole. What strikes the golfer immediately is how many of the holes are routed around or over "walls of grass" - holes that from a visual perspective recall features through the fairway that you might see at Ballybunion, Cruden Bay, Royal County Down. (I'm not suggesting that RNK looks like or plays like a links.) The first is a good example, with the mammoth ridge/quasi-dune eating into the fairway from the left. Should I try to carry it, or play safely to the middle? I found myself pleasantly anxious on a number of holes (1, 3, 4, 5, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16), on either tee shot or approach or sometimes both - the design regularly obscures the line of sight, or deceives the golfer, into questioning his intended play. Sometimes this is done through the intervening land forms. Sometimes (as on three of the four par threes - 3, 7 and 12) the placement of hazards causes the golfer, if he is not careful, to misperceive the depth of the green. There is abundant width through most of the fairways, more in fact than seems the case from the tee. There is a great deal of interior contour to many of the greens (I though the par 3s were especially notable in that regard).
I do not know, but from what I have read perceive that there was less earth moving at RNK than one might imagine; that Strantz mostly took what was there and made it "more so" in terms of the ridges, humps, etc. This is not mere "mounding," though - it's too muscle-bound for that, and affects decisionmaking and shot selection (even from the tee) too much. It may be an engineered course, but what you're seeing has a strategic purpose and isn't just eye candy.
On the negative side, while the routing in terms of variety of holes and shots is very good, I did not study well enough to have an opinion about whether the huge distances between many greens and tees was avoidable or not. The course does seem unwalkable (I didn't try), and playing in less than four hours seems highly unlikely (the yardage book requests you to keep your round to less than four hours, fifty minutes(!); I think our group finished in about 4:15). If your game is not on, or are a high handicapper, you will likely lose some golf balls. There were some forced carries that caused my father, sensibly, to move up on some holes to the forward tees. The 18th hole (I'm sure it has been remarked on here before) doesn't really fit.
But the negatives were far outweighed by the positives. This course really suggested creativity and non-repetitiveness to me; I will be looking into some more Strantz, for sure.