Jason:
Actually, that's a very good summary. As I expected though, what you are really describing is partly a changing of the guard personnel-wise, rather than major philosophical change on my part. To wit, my comments on your comments:
* Strategy from the tee seems to have evolved to create more options in terms of line and distance. The example that pops into my my mind of the most dynamic end of the spectrum is #8 at CommonGround. I can think of 5 different spots to place the drive based on hazards, and pin placement. This is far more nuanced and interesting than a simple matter of picking one side of the fairway or the other.
- I think you could find 3 or 4 options from the tee on #6 at Apache Stronghold, or for that matter 3 options on #13 at Black Forest. [Obviously, Black Forest was more restricted by the fact it was cut from a forest.] Interesting that you chose #8 at CommonGround, though, because that's probably the single hole I worked on the most. I tried to leave more of that course to my associates [Eric Iverson, Don Placek, and Jim Urbina] since all three had ties to the Denver area, and since that was inherent in our fee arrangement. [The reason you like the variety of the par-3's so much is that three different guys designed them!] However, #8 was the plainest hole on the course, and we wrestled for a long time on what to do with it, placing and moving and removing pieces in the fairway over two or three different trips from me. I was really pleased how it turned out in the end ... no one would pick it as the worst hole now.
* Bunkering has gone from what seemed like experimentation with style, to confidently expressing style and creativity. It is somewhere between hard and impossible to find a bunker at Rawls that is not really cool and creative.
- Part of this is personnel, and part of it is a change of equipment. The guys who shaped the bunkers on each project were Gil Hanse [mostly] and Mike DeVries [a little bit] at Black Forest; Randy Ray and Jim Urbina and Kye Goalby at Apache Stronghold; Eric Iverson and Brian Slawnik at The Rawls Course; and Eric and Jim and Brian and Jonathan Reisetter at CommonGround. It was at Pacific Dunes [in between Apache and The Rawls Course] that we started using trackhoes rather than bulldozers to shape the bunkers, and there is a lot more ability to do polished shaping with the trackhoe.
My philosophy on bunkers HAS changed over the years, and may come full circle yet. In the early days I was experimenting with styles -- Black Forest was a conscious effort to try to build the sort of bunkers that MacKenzie and George Thomas did. But in general, I wanted my courses to be more about contour than about bunkering. At Apache Stronghold I wanted as few formal bunkers as possible, and we tried to make them look as if they were part of the natural washes [which are also in play on many holes]. The Rawls and CommonGround are both a bit different in style from what we typically do today -- The Rawls bunkers are narrow to try to mimic erosion and to minimize wind erosion, while CommonGround's are an attempt to produce a more old-fashioned look with less sand flashed -- but they are also the work of highly-practiced bunker shapers who spent a lot of time on them with superior equipment.
* Green sizes seem to have increased across the board. I don't know what the technical sq ft cutoffs are among small, medium, and large greens, but I do know that I was struck by how small some of the greens were at BF (starting with the 1st). The greens at RC and CG just seemed generally larger.
- This is true, our green size has started to creep larger and larger over time, though I am constantly reminding the guys to cut them back. Budget has something to do with it -- our greens are always smaller when the owner is on a tight budget, as more of our early clients were. Black Forest was certainly influenced by the size of the greens at Crystal Downs, and I don't get over there as often now as I did in 1991. Also, some of the early greens I shaped at High Pointe and Black Forest had some hole locations that were crammed too close to the edges, so you could barely use them; if I see that we might do that again nowadays, I'll just have them make the green a bit bigger to fix it.
* Creativity and mastery seems to have gradually extended back from the greens and surrounds all the way back to the tee. There are hints of this attention to detail in the way that the fairways at AS blend into their surroundings. RC and CG were at a whole different level. I felt like every square foot of those courses got equal attention to detail.
- This is the influence of all the guys who work with me today, but especially Brian Slawnik, who I think they would all agree is first among equals at finish work. Behind the scenes, the Renaissance Cup at Apache Stronghold was partly a come-to-Jesus meeting for my crew about doing higher-quality finish work [Bill Coore was there and had something to say about it, too] and ever since the our standard of finish work has been through the roof high. Sometimes, I feel like it's almost TOO high -- there needs to be a certain element of scruffiness and randomness if the course is going to feel natural, and Ran Morrissett as well as Jim Urbina have always reminded me of that side -- but there's no question that the respect for our work increased considerably after we started to put in the extra effort on the finish side.