Rich,
You prove the perfect example of someone that can dangeously make that call of seeing the differences, yet never having seen them in person to understand the difference between both holes. Pat, you of all people should be calling Rich on this!
In my mind, I can only think of two people I know that have played the two courses--Pat and Gibby, and while Pat loves Shadow Creek, Gib thought it was good, but from memory felt much like me that its a GREAT experience and a underwhelming golf course, both love Pine Valley, which Shadow Creek doesn't even compare.
For me being not a paticulary long player, at Shadow Creek #17 I hit 8 iron left of the green, pin high in the weeds and waterfalls and didn't even attempt to find it. My feeling while standing on the tee were just like any other forced carry over water some 135 yards, way above the hole. Meanwhile at #14 at the Valley, I hit a well struck 4 iron past the middle left pin, and just missed a comeback putt of some 15 feet for a bird. The whole time I felt like I needed to be hooked-up to a heart monitor!
Does this sound like they play anything alike?
Pine Valley's 14th is much more penal and Shadow Creek's 17th is not even in the same league, let alone CLASS of golf hole.
Why they are compared here is simply to show the similarities in THE LOOK and Nature of the holes, Both are forced carries over water to a green that is more or less an island, only Shadow Creek dresses itself up like a $35.00 Las Vegas call girl with the waterfall and artificial plantings and all. At Pine Valley, you have this wonderful sandy scrub that exists and is no longer exploited because of why? Wasn't the intent for building Pine Valley in such a site, as well as the thoughtful nature of a sandy site such as this the one alluring factor that makes Pine Valley so special to begin with? Why its as if your dressing a 35-year old Catherine Deneuve in cover-alls!
At Shadow Creek, great effort was made to make you feel like your hitting to these special greensites in the game, but unfortunately they don't play anything at all like them. It is the one and only really interesting saving factor for Shadow Creek--a far over-rated golf course in the scheme of ratings and rankings and popular opinion.
Rich, you are correct though. I don't think George Crump would have ever figured Pine Valley as being flush with pines like it is today. I think he loved the trees he had to work with, and knew that many of them would comeback in its evolution, but where does one draw the line on the penal nature of the trees themselves, especially when they impede on the actual characteristics and strategies of the golf holes themselves? Pine Valley has made brilliant steps to recover this, so why not open the back up of the 14th and expose some of that beautiful sand hazards that were built there? I can't thnk of a better image in my mind then the beauty of the pines, to the stark contrasting sand as well as the picture that it would make to those like Rich who have not had the good fortune to see for themselves in person.
You would think that a consulting architect would want to inform his client of the possibilites like this, as well as could be acheived for next to nothing. Instead, it's not about adding new tees to golf holes that seemingly have had no problem problem presenting a challenge to any form of golfer in the past.