I feel like one of the biggest criticisms of Nicklaus was that he designed around his own game, which understandably was not relatable for most people.
Maybe the disconnect is too great between tour level and weekend hacker.... is the pro always going to be designing for the pro game, even subconsciously?
The biggest difference is that their perspective on the game is just very different than mine or yours, which has a lot to do with their own games, and their strengths and weaknesses. It's not subconscious at all.
I just spent a few hours Tuesday with Padraig Harrington at The Renaissance Club; his role has been to listen to comments from the players, combine that with his own knowledge of competing out here, and provide feedback to me. I learn something every time I talk to him.
The lesson this trip was again in how the players think. For the past couple of years, I've been trying to concentrate any changes we might contemplate on whether they will change what the players are trying to do off the tee or on their approach. From the feedback, it seems I've understood their strategy correctly, but not their emotions.
For a concrete example: the first hole had no trouble down the right, and players were just banging it down there to take a tree on the left out of play, so two years ago we added a pretty nasty fairway bunker on the right, in tight to the fairway at 300-315 yards off the tee. If you get it in there, you sometimes won't be able to hit it on the green, and the players are okay with that . . . they know that if they hit it in there, it's their own fault, they missed the shot.
What they DON'T like is that there is twenty yards of manageable rough to the right of that bunker before you get to a gorse bush, and if their opponent hits a worse miss and winds up there, he has an EASIER shot to the green. And THAT pisses them off. From their perspective, a worse miss should be punished more, because they all have the ability to hit whatever shot we ask, and if they didn't it's on them. [Important to note that no one would deliberately aim for that rough, because it's too close to the gorse; but it might cause some of them to downplay the bunker, because that's not always where they'll wind up if they miss right.]
So from most Tour players' standpoint, a perfect course would have 1-inch rough just outside the fairway, and then it would bevel up to knee-high rough thirty yards further out, on both sides of the target zone. They'd like my first hole better if we put in another bunker, or some thicker rough, or more contour to give you an odd stance in the rough. But then they'd complain if someone got lucky and hit it between the bunkers, or got a better lie in one of them!
If you say to them that amateurs would all quit if forced to play such a course, or vote with their feet and go somewhere else, they will laugh and understand that. But that doesn't change their view on what good architecture is, or what's fair. Their perspective is all geared toward playing for money against other great players; it's not about playing for fun. And mine probably would be different, too, if I were that good.
But most of us don't want to play a golf course designed to reward only the best shots, because most of us are incapable of hitting a shot that the Tour pro thinks of as outstanding.