It is apparently very hard to accurately determine what is in a golf architect's mind when he is creating something----eg on a dozer, in the dirt, whatever.
At GMGC, Gil Hanse and I came up with a concept for a new green on the 7th hole. The concept was very well and very comprehensively thought through and comprehensively disgusted. We felt we had most all the details worked out for what we felt the challenges and solutions would and should be (the overall "concept") for every level of golfer on this hole primarily due to this green design.
We decided that given the fact it was a short "go/no go" par 5 that the green should be essentially divided into two primary sections by what we conidered to be some good representative Maxwell mound contours on the green (those things Bill Coore labeled "poofs").
Gil even got off his machine and went around the course analyzing some of our Maxwell mound countours on a few of the other holes apparently to get some replication ideas.
Then he came back and created two side by side mounds in the middle of the green with a noticeable swale between them. This created a situation that if a golfer's ball was on the wrong side of the green from the pin these side by side mounds and swale would create a very difficult putt to the pin. This was our primary concept with this green because the hole is a short par 5----eg we wanted good players going at it in two to get their ball into the right section for a potential eagle or biridie and we wanted less talented golfers approaching in three to do the same.
It opened in the spring to some truly entrenched controversy. A few really loved it and it seems perhaps a majority didn't like it or downright hated it.
Those mounds and swale became known as "The Boobs and the Cleavage" and after a couple of years Gil actually performed a slight mastectomy on the left boob to make putting from one side to the other a bit more manageable.
This is the nature of golf course architecture when one has a highly creative mind, don't you think?
