V Kmetz,
I'd like to specifically address this:"all these collection areas and crowned green pads and uneven lies and capricious fingers in the bunkers"
I was under the impression that these are attributes that GCA appreciates/aspires to.
- TOC is full of collection areas and Pacific Dunes 16 has the nastiest collection ever I've ever played.
- Pinehurst #2 is the mother of crowned greens, and I think its viewed well here.
- Uneven lies aka rumpled fairways - I don't think I have to explain this, there are few things more highly regraded in the treehouse than this.
- Bunker fingers - I can kind of see your point on this one, but don't we also espouse penal bunkering as a virtue?
Sorry for the delay KB, I did want to address your post more punctually...just got sidetracked.
First, your prefatory "these are attributes GCA aspires to..." If you mean the posters on this site? Seems like it, but I don't read more than twice a week. If you mean Golf Course Architecture, the practice, then I answer: Not with exclusivity... and not at the expense/disappearance of other attributes.
And in final preface to direct answers, let's not pretend this course doesn't violate some other sacred canons of either site consensus or accepted good practice...the tee to green walks and grinding terrain; how does this inculcate the purist sense of walking and hand wringing at cartball?...the high cost pampering, closure and micro-scutiny of this course's diary to bring you this event...what kind of leadership in sustainable design and field business practice is that?
1. TOC's "collection areas" (which are not as uniform in number, severity and ubiquity) exist because of centuries patterns of play's use and only have been "managed" to their current state in the last 25 years. Some of this last quarter century directly attributable to its hosting of modern championships. I can follow PD intellectually and anecdotally, but I've never breathed the air or played there, so I won't refute/affirm that it somehow proves Erin Hills has gotten it right.
I don't think it was ever "natural" or necessary "attribute" of sound design to have balls that don't remain on the green pad to inch tolerance, go bounding, rolling pell mell to 35-50 yards away and 15-20 feet below the same surface...that didn't happen at TOC for 550 of its 600 years; the ball went into gnarled clump thatch and broken ground 3 -7 yards off the green. Yes ONCE in a WHILE, depending on the other pleasures and challenges of the course, such a feature is scary and cool and an amusing piece of endearing quirk to enjoy a match with your friends...but everywhere? This has the unkind taste (for my game and my compulsion to observe the competition) of a bulls***, screaming morning sports radio jock..."I'm an a**hole! I'm an a**hole!" Even if I had better means, why I waste a precious investment of time and travel to go play that?
2. If I was quoted accurately "crowned green pads" I misspoke by saying
crowned...when I meant "skyline"...I wouldn't/oughtn't call these "crowned" in any exceptional sense of the word; they are big potato chips tilted to one of three borderless sides, but they are almost ubiquitous in their uphill/semi-blind/partial approach view.
3. Rumpled fairways "accepted" in the treehouse...if it is then I'm sorry to differ from the pack, but I want variety much more than 13 rumpled fairways. A pleasurable and compelling courses ought to test as much as it can of everything as often as it can...off a tee, from a sidehill, try carrying a distant bunker at your limit, a lob, a running pitch, a feathered 6 iron, a low running hook, a blind shot, an elevated shot up and elevated shot down. I am a lover of width and a snarler at overgrown plantings, but I do not mind one hole on a fun course where you have to "thread the needle" I love a 230 yard hole...but I also am amused at a beguiling 110 yarder...I like one with a trick up its sleeve and a honest, almost featureless 450 yard one that calls for two big, straight hits. A rumpled fairway or three is likely just right for my tastes, depending on the character of hole, maybe a couple more...but 10, 11, 12, 13, 14...no way Jose. I'd like some flats, some slopes, some nuance of a sublime pitch to the playing ground too.
4. In this instance, I REALLY don't care if this has become an accepted criterion of bunkering (that they be penal)...the same thing as the response above in #3 holds true... I want variety in all things...I love how NGLA approachs this...there are soft ones and turtle-backs, and beachy sand ones, and ones that are in arcane laces...yes there are several, whereby
how you come into them can result in an Erin Hills finger-f*** but the macrocosm is that they are not in and of themselves designed to determine what shall be penal. The first "penalty" (if there is to be
any, intellectually) is the change of surface from grass to sand, with the corollary inability to ground the club as you do for the other 70-90 shots we play. THAT's the first test "penalty"...to intentionally design fingers to cause woe is the height of manufactured, imo. Neither sheep, nor rabbits, nor habitual play made those fingers as they did on the venerated courses, the aspect of which Erin Hills has been falsely labeled, imo, as "naturalistic."
hope that gives full answer, but I'm open to more if there's more to say.
cheers
vk