Why do links courses generally do a better job of overcoming these issues? I think because players expect links courses to be less finished, more irregular than inland, "scientifically" designed courses. Their strategic variety flows from those irregularities, many of which would not be tolerated on inland courses.
So funky stuff that is a glitch in Chicago is a feature in Dornoch.
This must be a good post as it sets forth more problems in strategy; the excerpt above is really interesting to me.
Earlier this year I started studying camouflage as a doctrine. In a series of email exchanges with the world's leading experts on camouflage, one in particular really stood out. I had been trying to explain the application of camouflage doctrine to course design, and more broadly the importance of "naturalism" or hiding the hand of man.
Ah, he wrote back, "To paraphrase Claude Levi-Strauss, cooking it but serving it to look raw." This is a critical point! If you are familiar with Levi-Strauss's concepts, then this insight opens up a whole world, at least it did for me. I have spent a lot of time working through how design really does take the cooked and serve it raw. It's an elemental thing that draws in a lot of other disciplines and concepts.
Nobody really believes "nature" is the architect of TOC, do they?
Links design takes the cooked and serves it raw. Somehow this is very important to people's enjoyment -- most people's anyway -- of golf courses. It's like a fundamental need, much like Levi-Strauss's point about modern cultures not really getting away from the "raw" mythemes, just cooking them so they become acceptable.
We think we want our golf raw, but what we're really eating is cooked but served to look raw. It's the rationale hiding behind naturalism, camouflage and "deep architecture" (inaccessible architecture).
Bob, so your Reply #11 somehow is related to this, in that one could argue ANGC et al are taking the cooked and serving it...cooked. That it appears to be very popular tells us that something in people's preferences may have changed. Levi-Strauss would say most golfers have moved from a primitive culture to a modern one; they now want designers to take the raw and serve it cooked.
Personally, Bob's post is what sets links golf on a higher plane: to have the cooked served as though it were raw is a far more palatable meal.
Mark