Phil, I agree with you that Lawsonia is better preserved. However, when we start talking about Spring Valley and Culver, GCA aficionados who haven't visited Clovernook are making a mistake in looking past it. It's extremely true to its Langford roots and in far more playable condition than either of those courses. I would argue that the course is far more reflective of Langford's ideals than those unfinished works, and also far more enjoyable for someone who just wants to play golf.
Clovernook does have too many trees, though the photos exaggerate their effect. In fact, the course has corridors wide enough for strategic placement but harsh tree-induced penalties if those corridors are missed. However, the primary strategy of the course is not width-driven, but length driven. This is due to a pair of ravines that cross the property and are mostly traversed by playing across rather than alongside the hole corridors. The ravines effectively limit bombers from hitting 330 yard missiles and force them instead to throttle back, thus preventing them from rendering the original landing areas obsolete. Meanwhile the average player may reckon with them on his second shots. But throughout the course, the ravines ask players to determine whether they can effectively make carries or not, and how close they want to get to the ravine edge to set up a shorter approach. That would have been the case in 1923, and it's still the case today.
It's pretty reductionist to suggest that all of Langford's courses featured playing strategies based on width. Truthfully, Langford's portfolio is less studied than any other Golden Age architect of significance and much of our judgment of his work appears to be based on what Ron Forse has restored at Lawsonia, which is fantastic but still a small sample size. Spring Valley is fairly narrow and doesn't offer a lot of strategic lines off tees, and I doubt that was much different when it was first built simply due to its fairly compact property width. Likewise, Clovernook has been somewhat narrowed by trees but was always a tight property for the length of course it contains. To suggest that Langford intended for it to have Lawsonia's width without having visited and seen the property seems a bit presumptuous. As you know, I've made the trip from Madison to Cincinnati many times. I'd encourage you to do the same. There's a direct flight between our cities and the drive is less than 7 hours. It's not as good an example of his work as Lawsonia, but it's far truer to its original design than Spring Valley, Harrison Hills, or even Wakonda which I have loved from outside the fence on MLK but which hardly features Moreau's trademark shaping.
Jud, the 18th really hasn't changed aside from the number written in the "Par" row of the scorecard. A front left bunker was added many years ago, but it's still possible to run the ball on with an accurate shot up the right side (that's the only way I've done it). I suspect that from our way-back 330 yard tee on that hole, it poses a similar challenge for the modern player to what it posed in 1923. I doubt the scoring average has changed by more than .05 strokes from 1923 to today. Clovernook traditionally plays more match play than stroke play, and regardless of what par is ascribed to the hole, it's a wonderful closing hole in a match where anything from a 2 to a 6 is in play.