Bob:
I don't know, Dick Wilson did have a following--that I know but obviously he wasn't anything like the big marketing or noteriety machine of RTJ.
That may be why Wilson could be considered more of a true transition architect from the pre-war era to the post-war era. That really wasn't RTJ because anyone knowledgeable about those eras or who remembers that time could make a pretty good case that is was RTJ himself, and probably alone, that basically created much of what the the modern era initially came to be!!
How did RTJ do that? Basically by offering some new concepts in architecture that didn't seem to have any real foundation at all in the pre-war era architecture. Many of them were new and wholly innovative. They definitely included an immediate push into much greater overall distance (and I think there definitely was a bit of a nefarious reason for that!), much larger scale in bunkering, in green size, multi-form green shapes, super long teeing areas, strategic "definition" and "dictation" with bunkering on both sides of drive areas etc.
There were certainly a number of simultaneous contributing factors for this kind of thing, I'm sure. Immediately superior equipment (maybe having something to do with the high production and innovativeness in large machinery of WW2!), superior and far more prevalent irrigation, the onset of a entirely new wave of more sophisticated golf equipment, and the fact that RTJ was a natural born star and promoter! RTJ was definitely "The Man" and we of this era should understand and not forget that. RTJ almost single-handedly put the whole concept of the super-famous International architect on the map. Sure, some of the old guys were famous in some golf and architectural circles but RTJ became the first golf architect who was widely known by the general public and even the non-golfing public.
And there was probably another sort of phenomenon of that early Modern Age era of the very late 1940s, picking up steam through the 1950s and into the 1960s. America, like England wanted to put the World War and that world shattering time behind them and try to forget the pain and dislocation of it all and get onto something else with a fresh break! RTJ offered that in spades--Wilson really didn't. England voted Churchill out of office after having him lead them through the War (trying to forget).
The US returned home and wanted to get on with a new kind of life and enjoy a new stability. Most of those old courses had been mothballed anyway, they were narrowed, features let go and obsoleted and basically forgotten about on purpose. America wanted to look to a new age in almost everything anyway and forget the old and RTJ was either lucky enough or clever enough to play into that sentiment in spades. Forget the past and start the new!
Dick Wilson was much at all like that, that I can see--except for the fact that he did seem to parallel some of RTJ's inovative ideas but didn't really stick with them or promote them. But I know that a very dedicated group of golfers and clubmen, particularly from the interconnection of The Northeast coast and Florida and also the beginning of the Midwest influence in Florida stuck to Wilson and had very little to do with RTJ. Wilson was a southeast Florida based architect and they used him on everything they did, including redesigning such places as Seminole, Gulf Stream and building such courses as Pine Tree, Meadow Brook, Deepdale, Bidermann, Wilmington, Laurel Valley, Bedens Brook and also some courses in the Bahamas such as Lyford Cay.
The important thing to understand is most all those people responsible for those courses knew each other--they were a loose group of interconnected friends and acquaintences from up and down the East coast and also some midwestern and sourthern centers. How and why did they know each other like that? That's an interesting story but mostly had to do with the fact that they all wintered along the southeast coast of Florida--and they all had money!
When Wilson died somewhat prematurely they all turned to Joe Lee (Wilson's partner) for a time but a very brief time. One of the reasons Lee's popularity may have been brief was right at that time another budding golf architecture star entered their picture and their world and group--Pete Dye!
But ironically they never really did use Pete Dye the same way they used and relied on Wilson. Pete was into his own style--a style that has to be considered an entirely separate and distinct entity in the overall era of the "Modern Age". Pete was a bit of a "renaissance" architect very much bringing ideas and concepts and features from the old country into his new style architecture. Pete also got much of his initial noteriety from professional tourament golf architecture!
That got immediate notice but it never seemed to fit into that Wilson modus operandi for that loose group of redesigning some of their old courses and evolving his new archtiecture out of them in many ways unlike RTJ! So in many ways that interesting interconnected group that was so high on Wilson sort of dispersed. He died, they were getting older etc, etc!