Mark,
There is difference between quirk, funky, funkadelic and funky dung.
When you find a tree - deliberately planted into the center of a putting surface - that is funky dung.
I've written this before somewhere, but still believe that golf courses (and golfers) can be roughly divided into those that seek an objective (even antiseptic) examination and a whimsical adventure.
Quirk - and its' more ornate cousin - funkadelic - are the cornerstones of what makes a certain course endearing.
The Himalayas at Prestwick (inter alia) are beyond quirk - as is Klondike at Lahinch . . . . . and a large chunk of Cruden Bay. I would suggest these are the features that bring forth the personality of the course.
It always astonishes me there are people who hate Mike Stranz' more unusual holes - but many stand bigger than life - and the entertainment value breathes life into why people like me play the game to begin with.
I would also state - putting aside the course is designed around template holes - that the manufactured quirky features at NGLA is central to the reason it remains my favorite golf course in America.
You think the Double-Plateau was just sitting there on #11, waiting to be found? Probably not, but it is manufactured, quirky as hell and huge fun. You think that rampart (lack of a better term) guarding the putting surface on the right side of the Leven Hole was just sitting there when C.B. designed it?
Along the same lines, a primary reason that Pac Dunes is so universally loved is that every single hole has some quirky feature that complicates any attempt to play a straightforward shot.
Go stand on the tee on #2 and tell me Shoe's bunker - sitting in the middle of the fairway, sticking its tongue out at you - isn't quiky and nutty . . . . . until you play the hole twice, once from each side. Now the quirky mounding around the putting surface changes the entire energy flow of the landscape.
I strongly advocate for MORE Quirk and unusual twists and turns. Why not confront golfers with a non-sequitur here and there?
Thinking of starting a thread that asserts the need for a completely new, epochal paradigm - one that throws out most of our conventional ideas of hole numbers, par, length and what strategic elements can be blended into a new architectural matrix.
I was raised by a traditionalist, God knows, but I see the youngsters losing interest in the game for a variety of reasons - and do not believe this current avaricious money-fest the country clubs are enjoying has legs going forward.