Well, knock me over with a feather. Hundreds of posts from Tom D about PGA Pros not knowing about good design and/or being irrelevant for good design. Guess situational perspective is everything. Where is Zac Blair when we need him?
Ira: I don't think you will find as many posts from me like that in the archives as you think you will.
For example, several people here tried to exaggerate my post with the faux outrage so common to the Internet, but I believe my first post on the subject was that golf pros should not believe they can just roll out of bed and design a great course. Of course, you could say the same about Golf Club Atlas participants. It is hard for even someone with years of experience to do great work, without a lot of talented help getting it built. [Which Zac has now sought out. Still, I don't think anyone should compare what they haven't built yet to a "10" on the Doak Scale.]
I've also posted many times that one of the secrets to my success has been to not think very much about what the pros will do, and just design for the average golfer's enjoyment. Those that design for TOUR courses tend to be very conservative, because they don't want to look stupid on TV if the set-up is wrong and the greens are too fast, and the players might complain about anything out of the ordinary. I didn't have to worry about that at High Pointe or Lost Dunes or even Pacific Dunes, so I could build greens and hazards that others would not. That is one definition of "irrelevant" but probably not the same one you were implying.
I did get to visit with six or eight pros in Florida last month, and mostly they told me not to try to reinvent the wheel for our project in Houston -- that the sort of holes we have been building ARE relevant for them, that angles can still matter, and that shorter holes are more interesting for them than those 490-yard par-4's we have to include.
I do have a different attitude for this project than I might have had five or ten years ago. I learned from Pete Dye to listen to the players and find out what makes them uncomfortable, because Mr. Dye was looking for things that might affect the pros more than the average player, and he believed most of those things had to be psychological in nature. But, the goal is different here. Our client is the sponsor of the tournament, and the goal is to build a course that the players like and respect, so they want to come back and play it every year. Which is not to say we are going to make it a pushover. Every golfer likes a challenge, or the game becomes boring.
So, I hope the City Council approves the project today, and we can get going on it. But once it starts, I don't plan to be here regularly talking about it. If you want to know what we are up to, come see for yourself.