Fellows,
I admit what many have said...there's a perverse, revolt against the mundane in an individual Muirhead hole and such divergent styles are needed in all the Arts (of which architecture and GCA are a tribe).
But for 18 holes...Stone Harbor in south jersey is a BAD golf course, Farmington woods is a BAD golf course, Oronoque is a BAD golf course.
i think Muirhead could have been a Wallace Stevens-like poet of GCA, imagination on a thin leash, but instead he is like Guillaume Apollinaire, making a poem about Paris in the shape of the Eiffel Tower, that no one truly reads, but looks at.
By zealously, cravenly needing to mix every element of hazard into a hole presentation, water, sand, distinct, unnatural transitions and odd green shapes he ends up making a visually interesting thing whose elements have no playing value whatsoever. it's wonderful to look at on a thread like this or in a golf calendar or in an architectural history book on landscape architecture - but who really gets any satisfaction once the ball has plunked in the water or come to rest next to the grass eye in the St. George and the Dragon thing.
I also note that many Muirhead pictures show Par 3s and/or holes with water. The guy was absolutely lost when you had to play an everyday ol' fairway shot or wish to play a 250 drive down left center.
Still, he's a significant architect for this style. i'm glad he lived and designed what he did. I just have no desire to go one mile out of my way to play a round on his courses, no less go to Japan.
***I think he influenced Nicklaus' 1980-1995 era of design for the worse, with their shared work at Muirfield Village. In an inchoate sense, I don't think Jack ever broke free from that influence and it tended to posit Jack into high-commercial "signature" design styles
that haven't aged too well***
cheers
vk