I've been sitting at lunch in Bandon watching some of the final match with Jim Urbina and Brian Slawnik and Jonathan Reisetter, and we are all generally impressed with the golf course. I've never seen Jack build so many holes where you hit it to point A on the green and use a contour to feed it to point B.
Do I think we've influenced his work? Yes. I think Ed Getka is right that he was evolving a bit in that direction anyway [deciding that the only way to defend par anymore is with green contours], but I think we accelerated that evolution. I say that mostly because the collaboration at Sebonack is the only outside influence he's had for a while ... Sebonack is still the only course I've worked on that Jack has ever seen, and his 3-hour tour of Friars Head is the only look he's had at Coore & Crenshaw's work. So, I would disagree with John K. Moore that his style is changing because that's what's popular right now ... I don't think he would have paid any attention to that otherwise.
Have we been influenced by working with Jack? Yes, although not in such obvious stylistic ways. I think we are doing even bolder work now as a result of working with Jack [and that Jack is doing bolder work as a result of working with us], although I am not really sure if that's a good thing or not ... I wish subtlety were more appreciated in the modern era. I certainly learned more about what it takes to really challenge great players, although in general that is not as important to our range of clients (or to me personally) as it is to Jack's clients (and to Jack). That's why we appeal to different people, as Mike Young notes.
When I was collecting opinions from other people before agreeing to the deal at Sebonack, one of our mutual acquaintances told me that Jack would take a lot of things from our collaboration and apply it to future projects, because he was very smart and very observant. At the time I dismissed that comment as the friend kissing my butt, but in hindsight, it was the truth.
Really though, in the last couple of years I've seen what I thought were influences from our work and Bill's work in courses being built by lots of different architects ... everyone from Tom Fazio to Tom Lehman. Neither one of those guys has even seen one of my courses either, as far as I know ... but their associates have, or some of our former interns are working on the shaping. So we may just have more influence now because there are more potential connections to be made.