Don,
Some good points, but not without some counter points that might not work out as well, unless of course, you are planning on mothballing the course for a year until the next year's tournament.
I think this course resonates with me because it was the first course I ever played (courtesy of my next door neighbors who were members…..) Of course, after that, I was relegated to muni's by my non club joining Dad, so I probably hold this course in more awe than others. By the end of the day on No. 3, I had decided I would be a golf course architect.
That said, I often laugh that at the tender age of about 12 to 15, I decided the best architectural theory was fewer, but very deep bunkers like No. 3 had. Funny, but the design world (including me) went to more bunkers for looks and shallower bunkers for "playability" which are perfectly reasonable design assumptions for every day play.
The bad points about your tough theories, as correct as they may be, is anything that affects a tour player affects the average one 4X, maybe 10X. Reverse slope greens hard to hold from the wrong angle, I have designed those and of course average golfers run through and good ones just hit higher spin shots. At the moment, I think they only work perhaps on short par 5 holes or maybe long par 4 holes (if there is such a thing for those guys) where players may be reaching the green on the roll.
More contours? Isn't tournament golf too much putting already?
Less sand hazards, I agree with. Grow grass bunkers long for tournaments, shave them back afterwards to make them more playable. Of, for tournament golf make sand bunkers deeper as before, or at least for existing shallow ones, as CBM suggested, run the cavalry through them. Only problem is, JN experimented with Oakmont furrows at MV, and the players didn't like even that, and the experiment ended. The architect is only in charge of the design, not the eventual course set up, but reducing sand hazards, given the current situation, should work.
Ditto letting balls run in trees. It might have to be very site specific, which is okay, why is it necessary to have consistency that golfers can count on helping them (at that level?)
On open holes, given the ineffectiveness of sand bunkers on strategy, in most cases, I have occasionally suggested (only to be laughed out of the room) roughs (which still do affect play somewhat, depending on height) of different lengths left and right of the fw, rather than equal, to bring back Golden Age type strategies. You would probably challenge a 2000 sf fw bunker to get an angle, but challenging the whole length of fw with 5" rough or bailing out to the 1.5" rough side might create some dilemma. I don't really know, I guess. Heck, they could even change height the further you get from the tee (i.e., 1.5" up to 250 off the tee, changing to 5" somewhere thereafter.) I don't think it's feasible to have 1" for 50 yards, 1.5" for 50 yards, 2" etc. which would be the ultimate in "proportional punishment."
As to dogleg holes, Medinah No. 9 and 16 offer some examples of what happened. At 200 yards in 1931, they became obsolete. As Arnie complained, 18 required a snap slice to play. Jack complained about 16 (then 13, I believe) having such a short, sharp dogleg after the 1975 Open and basically that started Medinah's drop in the rankings. Jack, of course, also pioneered in large part the architectural line of thinking that (in his words) "a golf course should never hurt you."
Maybe the next gen or tour pros in design will take an opposite track, but even incorporating Jack's theories, winning scores were still pretty low and he got a lot of complaints, eventually requiring him to soften his theories, again, because average golfers just couldn't play his courses.....(think greens angled across the line of play. Fazio also used that at Butler National, which worked well until the bluegrass fw were converted to bent and tournament agronomy took over, allowing Tour Players enough spin to stop on a dime no matter how shallow the green.
Maybe that's the ticket, leave the courses and let the fairways get a bit shaggier? Or reduce watering, as you also suggested, for a fast running course. Would the pros say (as JN also said) that it reduces the relationship between skill and winning just to make sure high scores won? He and others have obviously striven to reduce the amount of luck in the game, and you would have to change the mindset that you could be hitting great shots all day and still have one "bad" bounce drop you in the standings (and money list).
My last never implemented suggestion for roughs.....poison ivy! Get in there, and not only hard to hit out, but you may have to DQ yourself by the next day.