I played one round there ten or twelve years ago and found it be challenging and interesting.  The design made good use of the lakefront, about five holes with water in play always on the left.  There were several holes with good cross bunkering, although some seems to have been changed.  For example, the hole now playing as #18, then #2, had a great series of echelon bunkers from short left to long right and a slightly left to right fairway, uphill to a large, two level green.  On the telecast today there appeared to be just one large bunker on the right edge of the fairway.  The cross bunkers were better.

All in all I thought the course was solid, a lot of deep bunkers and good green contours.

A fair amount of work at RTJ was done by Kyle Phillips.

From his web site, regarding his recent work,  "The major architectural activity took place on holes 14, 15, and 18 along with some work on No. 4 green and No. 9 tee. The No. 15 and No. 18 fairways were rebuilt from the landing areas to the greens, and the No. 9 tee was expanded and improved at the spots where members wanted to play. The most noticeable renovation, however, was made at the layout’s finishing hole.

“The old green sat up quite a ways above the lake,” says Phillips. “There was always a desire by the members to get the green nearer to the lake.

Both the PGA and the RTJ membership played big roles in the upgrades. The changes were geared for the long-term health of the venue and not just to accommodate the Presidents Cup every so often.
“Members of the PGA Tour had their issues and the club wanted to know how that theory would be applied, if it would fit in with the original design,” says Phillips. “ You have a very astute membership there. They take a lot of pride in their golf course, and rightly so.”"

The entire article can be found at http://www.kylephillips.com/news_kdp_rtj.html

Tom:

Those "brows" are one feature I really dislike, not just at RTJ [which I haven't seen] but on a lot of courses.  They always seem to me to be heavy-handed design ... as if the architect or shaper thinks he is making them seem natural by extending them off the green, when in fact he is just making them more pronounced and unnatural to look at.  Once you've missed the shot, there is no way around them, you've just got to go up and over and [with fast greens] goodbye!

It's perfectly okay to have some "brows" like that which extend off the green, but when ALL the greens contouring comes from the outside, I think the design gets pretty unnatural and redundant as well.

I heard Johnny Miller say yesterday that RTJ was a gorgeous piece of property that would be an architect's dream to get his hands on (paraphrased).  Any merit to this comment?  I'm no golf architect and have never visited the site, but the course looked pedestrian from the television coverage, which I realize can be misleading.  Also, can anyone comment on the rounded, amoeba-like fairway cutouts that predominate most of the holes?  Are these cuts mostly cosmetic?

Classic golfclubatlas.com, a thread entitled "Merits of RTJ" that specifically invites negative opinions.

Classic golfclubatlas.com, a thread entitled "Merits of RTJ" that specifically invites negative opinions.

Michael,

The point of my thread is to elicit negative responses.  I've never played RTJ but I'm curious and would like to go a little deeper as to why some folks have issues with this course or, more broadly, T. Jones Sr. style.

Tom Doak provided a specific and interesting point concerning "brows" I had not considered before.  This is an example of what I'm looking for, not to rip on T. Jones Sr. or RTJ, but architectural issues some may have an opinion on.

Ken