Ian---You are the Post-Master---are you a Virgo by chance?
I have always belived good architects copy good and bad architects copy bad. This can be more generalized to concept in golf architecture. Coore´s and Doak are currently hailed as the best but are not a lot of their concepts from the past, things they saw in courses from the past and than tweaked a little bit or quite a bit. I love their works and more inportantly have the utmost respect for them but if one wanted to critize, one could say, they seem to have left the door open and they lack originality. I am not making or supporting this statement because I have seen a ton of thier work on photo´s only! But if you want to only catagorize originality, Dye seems to be ahead of the rest of the field in pulling it off right and Desmond for just doing it! My point is this, the current fad of postage stamp greens, surrounded by three feet native grasses and natural mounding, and ripped bunker edges are gorgeous and fun to play but their is a limited market for these courses. Kisser found a niche and is doing great courses around the world and producing profitable numbers by focusing on quality product and value. But his target market also has a limit.
Why worry about the next fad or what will be next in originality. Lets worry about something really important like signed checks as Mike Young states so often and so brilliantly. If you think by discovering the above mentioned will get you just that, 99 out of one hundred of you will go hungry! Here are the facts of GA as I see them now and in the incoming years.
1. We live in a more and more branded society. Branding will continue, that market is currently saturated with Pro named design firms charging ridicuousl prices and requiring out of range construction cost. Prices will come down in their fees as they compete more and more with each other and the suopply and demand drops. These projects like to surface fish and their targeted market are the big fish and there are less and less big fish on the surface thus the relation to drop in overall market supply and demand and the eventual downfall of the design fees.
2. So if you want to survive and your not connected with a big name branding pro, better let out some more line and start looking for some fish deeper down. Couple that with we have become a more and more time oriented society than you will need to start thinking in nine holes that play like eighteen or twelve holes like previously mentioned that play like eighteen. In order to hook a fish in the middle depth or bottom depth you will need to also be extremely value oriented. The above scenario fits this by reducing initial land cost. Throw in some environmental concerns and the budget starts to drop. Perfect day to day, green, wall to wall conditions are for the big fish, the medium and smaller fish will accept less if you give them a memorable experience at a fair price. Look for the routing in the valleys to leave residential or hotels high so not to ruin the golfing experience but allow for other sources of income because stand alone profitable facilities are still and will be in the future, the exception. So my advice, let Ron Witten worry about fads and originality, I am sure he makes more money writing than he does designing, so get focused and try to see where the next signed check can be generated. And as Forrest Gump always said,”That’s all I have to say bout that!”