My wife's father used to say "it's better to be rich and healthy than sick and poor". A funny truism but I think it applies here. A great routing with terrific greens beats a course lacking one or the other. Nonetheless, few courses qualify so Peter asks, which attribute is more important? To a real degree, routing is destiny. Yet without great greens, the course can only be so good. Similarly, a course with great greens and surrounds will always be fun and interesting but if the tee to green game is mundane, it will lack a certain amount of interest. I suspect that a portion of the time, the property dictates what can be done although it is certainly more feasible to create great greens on a mundane site. However, even that problem can be cured by money for earth moving. My preference, if I have to choose, runs toward great greens. But that is a preference.
As for Buerhle, I grew up in old Comiskey Park and am a lifelong White Sox fan. More accurately, I am a baseball fan who roots for the Sox. While Buerhle was never overpowering, he threw strikes, changed speeds and fielded his position while taking the ball every fifth day. As a result, he had an acceptable ERA for his time and won a lot of games for mostly mediocre teams. While he might not have been an "ace" for many teams, almost any team would have been happy to have him in their starting rotation because he was a winner. He retired with plenty left in the tank. I suspect that's what Peter was expressing in suggesting that Buerhle as a starter was the equivalent of a course with good greens but lacking other attributes to make it "great".