As far as the Norman Course...I don't remember the hazards being poorly placed. The green contours were not unique but were competently done, I think. They certainly weren't bad.
Off the fairways, what's so bad about decomposed granite?
-It contrasts the fairways and greens very well.
-It provides a relatively difficult recovery for the good golfer and a relatively playable one for the high handicapper.
-It provides options, although weird ones, as far as recovery - putt, hit down on it, blast it - and there are risks and rewards for each possibility.
-It's virtually impossible to lose a ball in it.
-It's conducive to unimpeded foot and cart traffic.
-It's cheap and easy to maintain.
I'm not saying grass would be so bad, but there's plenty of grass to aim at anyway. I think, based on the list above, decomposed granite is at least as acceptable as sand, and I don't think sand would be so bad.
As far as the plantings, would it be better if they matured into impenetrable plum thickets like Prairie Dunes, or gorse bushes like TOC, which are both courses renowned partly for those very features?
About that ancient sea bed business, I don't know, that sounded a little strange to me too!
I never used the word "great" about the Norman Course - I said it was fun and that I really liked it, although I don't think it's great. What I said was that it wasn't one of the worst courses ever built! I played it two years ago and I don't remember the specific locations of bunkers and contours of greens very well but it was at least acceptable. Visually I thought the course was just, "cool".
And yeah, the bunker sand is white. So's Augusta's, yay! Maybe the Norman Course's sand would be slightly less blinding if it were a little darker, but I don't think it looks bad because the sand is white and not brown or something. I mean, the course has a lot of eye candy, and you ought to expect a fairly attention-grabbing look for the green fees at that facility! I'm not above a little good eye candy, that's part of the fun. I just feel like I can tell when there's something behind it and when there's not. Besides, if you want to look at the "natural" side of thigns, the natural sand around La Quinta is more white than brown, so it's not so far off the map.
If you went on a date with a great looking girl who was OK to talk to, would you go on another one? I think so! Would you marry her? Probably not. I wonder if that's a good analogy for the Norman Course.
As far as the ground game thing, to start with a general statement, I like it. Was I the only guy on my team to go around our dormant OU course this winter with just a 5-iron, hitting 50 yard bump-and-runs for my third shots to the par-4's, just for the fun of it? Probably! I enjoyed it. Of course, I wouldn't do it in a tournament.
As I hinted at in my Muirfield post a week or two back, I am concerned that, in "normal" conditions - i.e., good weather - that the ground game might have only a minimal place in the future of elite-level golf.
I mean, when a good player can carry a ball 200 yards and have it roll less than 10 feet, why would he even try a low runner? In good weather, I can only see the ground game being a factor for such a player in three situations: 1) a punch from under trees 2) a shot to a firm green sloping away 3) a long second shot to a par-5. Wind, rain, etc. could of course change things up a bit.
In general, if there's anything on the ground, it would be kind of silly not to just fly the ball over it.
Think of the ultimate ground-game course, TOC, when Tiger won the Open in 2000. The golf course was absolutely rock hard tee to green. Did he play an aerially-based game? Definitely. Of course he hit some good low shots around the greens, but when we talk about the "ground game", I think we're referring to bouncing and rolling approach shots towards the hole. It's sort of a given that getting chips and pitches rolling early has always been the soundest way to play them (putts too!).
Besides, let's say you really wanted to force the ground game on players. You'd have everything rock hard and the green complex would slope away from the player. But now I'm hitting driver-pitching wedge from 450 yards. Of course, I'm not going to worry about the ground game a whole lot with a pitching wedge...you'd have to make the thing 500 yards, and that's just for a par-4. I suppose if we had a lot of 500 yard, rock-hard par-4's with greens that didn't slope towards the fairway, then we might see a lot more use of the ground game. Who would win every week? Tiger Woods, the one guy who could still fly it in there and make it stop - he'd still be hitting driver-pitching wedge!
You guys see what I mean. The whole thing with angles and ground game options is less than critical unless the ground is rock-hard and the elite player is hitting a middle or long iron, and who is going to build courses like that...and why would they?
I absolutely think that a great course should require a mix of air- and ground-game options, but these days, can such a course even exist in good weather? I think unless we roll back both the distance and spin rate of the golf ball, the answer to that question is "umm..." at best and "no way" at worst. I hope this post will provoke a few more opinions as to that question.