First I looked at some definitions for "subconscious":
From Wikipedia:
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"The term subconscious is used in many different contexts and has no single or precise definition. This greatly limits its significance as a definition-bearing concept, and in consequence the word tends to be avoided in academic and scientific settings.
In everyday speech and popular writing, however, the term is very commonly encountered as a layperson's replacement for the unconscious mind, which in Freud's opinion is a repository for socially unacceptable ideas, wishes or desires, traumatic memories, and painful emotions put out of mind by the mechanism of psychological repression. However, the contents do not necessarily have to be solely negative. In the psychoanalytic view, the unconscious is a force that can only be recognized by its effects—it expresses itself in the symptom. Unconscious thoughts are not directly accessible to ordinary introspection, but are supposed to be capable of being "tapped" and "interpreted" by special methods and techniques such as meditation, random association, dream analysis, and verbal slips (commonly known as a Freudian slip), examined and conducted during psychoanalysis. Carl Jung developed the concept further. He divided the unconscious into two parts: the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious. The personal unconscious is a reservoir of material that was once conscious but has been forgotten or suppressed."From Merriam-Webster:
The mental activities just below the threshold of consciousness.Finally, a fascinating NYT article of the subtleties of conscious thinking:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/31/health/psychology/31subl.html?pagewanted=allExcerpt:
"Yet the new research on priming makes it clear that we are not alone in our own consciousness. We have company, an invisible partner who has strong reactions about the world that don’t always agree with our own, but whose instincts, these studies clearly show, are at least as likely to be helpful, and attentive to others, as they are to be disruptive."I don't know how helpful these are.
How do I, or any critic, look inside the architect's mind and make a judgement about his/her subconscious? For instance, I know Tom Doak's work better than the other architects, and I know that Tom consciously tries to build courses that are challenging for the scratch golfer, but playable to the bogey player, even to the extent that the bogey golfer can play a career round on his courses. He has always cited his mother as an inspiration, a short hitter but clever around the greens.
Some of his courses, like Pacific Dunes, satisfy this criteria. On the other hand, Stone Eagle is quite difficult for the bogey golfer, but the outstanding golfer overpowers it, and negates much of the greenside difficulty. In general, I question Tom's original theory that the grand equalizer in course design is to make the short game difficult, as I believe tough greesnsites are proportionally more difficult for the average player.
But one thing I know for sure, and that is the typical scratch/single digit player around Portland, Oregon does not like sloped, tricky greens. Most grew up on tree-lined courses with disk-shaped, back to front sloping greens with little internal contour. They grew up playing less complicated golf than courses like Bandon Trails or Old Macdonald offer, and any do not like these courses. As you well know, good players want a consistent risk-reward equation, with few surprises and few "bad" bounces upsetting them.
OK, so here I am, the amateur psychologist, trying to look inside the architect's mind. Tom grew up younger than his peers in high school, a good player, but rather small for his age. Maybe Tom's got a chip on his shoulder from an early age, and looked at the big, strong, popular "Biffs" of the world with a mixture of envy and disdain, and when he set out to build courses, he unconsciously designed them to irritate Biff. He did all his research, framed all his thinking, and established his whole theory of architecture, because he resented that strong, popular guy who could beat him at golf, had the pretty girlfriend, and didn't have a tenth of the original ideas as he.
[See the movie "Crumb", for whom this "chip on the shoulder against popular guy" is clearly a conscious and motivating thought. Also, perhaps this says more about me than it does Tom.]
Let's extend this. Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player and most pro golfers are so competitive, and so focused on winning, would build courses they can beat others on. Pete Dye...he just wants everybody to suffer, and I don't know why. Maybe Tom Fazio builds pretty courses because he wants people to like him.
With that said, I doubt what I have written is true. I expect that any seasoned architect has explored his motivations in exhaustive fashion, and subconscious desires have been considered. Maybe I'm too charitable.
Finally, to Steve Lang, whose template for critique is admirable, but irrelevant for me. I let myself (conscious or otherwise) play the course, and make judgements based on criteria I've embraced over the years. I choose not to be very structured about it, the drawback being I may need more than one round to develop a strong judgement.