ANGC is becoming more and more like a classic US Open venue. (Mike Davis may change that. We'll see.) It's not there yet, but that seems to be the model being emulated. For a course that was once distinguished by the width of it playing corridors, today many of those corridors are less wide or, in some cases, narrow.
No. 1 - new fill-in trees on left are tightening and will continue to tighten fw.
No. 2 - ditto
No. 7 - words escape me
No. 9 - new fill-in trees on left will gradually tighten fw. It's already threading a needle to get to the wide LZ.
No. 11 - words escape me
No. 15 - new pines right and higher rough narrow considerably LZ. Note also new fill-in trees on left
No. 17 - words escape me
No. 18 - fill-in trees on left have already and will continue to tighten fw.
ANGC is the only top 25 course I know of that has added trees over the last decade. The only one. And we aren't talking about just a few trees. I'd guess that more than a thousand have been added. Many are blended in with existing stands, but virtually all of the new ones were planted on the fw side of those stands. They will continine to impinge on playing corridors. In short, ANGC will get narrower every year unless there is a sea change in the management of the course.
Yes, there remain some holes with wide playing corridors. But to focus on those and not see the bigger picture is what it means to take your eye off the ball. The architectural principles important to MacK and Jones - that width was important (a) for a course to be more playable and fun for the weaker player and (b) for a course that encouraged strategic thinking by better players where the greens are sufficiently challenging - those principles no longer seem to weigh in the balance.
I know, I know, they have to do something if ANGC is going to host a major tournament every year. We can have that argument if you like. But that's a separate set of issues. The issue here is architecture. What has been done to ANGC over the last decade or so has made it a much less interesting course architecturally. The reduction of width is a big (but not the only) part of that. And that's a real loss to golf architecture. A marker for great golf design has been diminished. Whether it will be lost entirely someday is anyone's guess, but things aren't trending well.
Bob