Christian / Anthony:
Yours is, indeed, a good question.
From the beginning of this project, my one concern was that we wouldn't get too button-holed into building a replica course or even a course which had to look like the stereotype of what Macdonald built, for precisely the reason you have brought up ... because if I got to a certain hole and though I had a better idea about how to do something, I didn't want to have my hands tied. (I never want to have my hands tied.)
Which is why I'm not surprised that nearly everyone who has been out to see the course comments along the lines of "It's not exactly what I expected," but also why people are excited about it. I've also heard a lot of people say it looked severe, which isn't usually the reaction to my work, but we've been working just as hard on the playability of this course as any of our others.
So, let's get to Christian's exit question: "In other words: Are there virtually unlimited solutions in building a golf course on a suitable piece of land, or is there always one ideal in the view of the designer which, if he is given restrictions, will lead to compromise and a result which is less than ideal in the eyes of that particular designer?"
To me, there is no one right way to build a golf course; I learned that as soon as I saw how diverse the top 50 courses are from one another. So I've always thought that you could approach the same piece of land with different styles and create something great, as long as you don't mess up the fundamentals of routing and construction. The rest is mostly individual preference, although I will insist that there are certain styles that WOULDN'T work well on certain properties, and that in theory there is one particular style BEST suited to any property.
So, in the case of Old Macdonald, we could have tried several different styles -- but it was helpful to have a different style in mind than the one I'd used before, just as Pacific Dunes was in part a reaction to certain elements of Bandon Dunes.
The word "compromise" came up a lot from the outside when we were working at Sebonack, but I'm surprised to hear it come up again here. This process has been so different for me than my usual method that I couldn't honestly tell you how the course might be different, although certainly, along the way, I've seen some potential holes out there that it was a bummer not to build. But that is pretty much ALWAYS the case on any property ... you can't build all the best holes you find ... your golf course in the end has to have just 18 holes, and they have to fit together. There's always compromise involved in that.
I think you guys as a group also tend to overestimate the impact of environmental restrictions. There were a couple of small wetlands we've had to work around on the Old Macdonald property ... we've used one of them as the carry hazard for our "Littlestone" hole, which you'd know as the "Lido" hole. But, in general, we haven't dealt with many restrictions at all. Yes, on some properties and with some features (streams), environmental restrictions do sometimes come into play a lot more than that, but not as often as you might think.