I have never met Darius but before he was ever involved in design work, his website consultancy claims were a little annoying, positioning him as the leading international voice and specifically rating a handful of golf course architects as the only ones worth considering. There was a lot of self-promoting bluster.
One of those architects was Mike DeVries… Perhaps Darius learned through this process that he shouldn’t have been so quick to put some architects on a pedestal at the expense of all others?
However, if what he writes is true, I can understand his frustration. I am sure he has only written it because no-one else did. And he’s not the first junior partner (in design terms) to see their name sidelined as time goes on and publications focus only on the marquee name. That has happened elsewhere on a regular basis… But in the end, you have to depend somewhat on the Client. If the Client actively reminds visitors of the co-design credentials, then most commentators will pick up on that.
Darius needs to pick what side he falls on. He apparently doesn’t consider himself a golf course architect. Yet he is happy to act as a consultant to advise on who should design a project. Until he clears that up, he might struggle. He should be one or the other.
I suspect the business plan as a consultant was more to (a) make money from developers who had no idea whom to hire, and (b) find a couple of architects who "owed" Darius for his help in finding bad clients in Asia, that he could piggyback to a co-credit. He's not the first golf writer who has used this approach and he'll probably not be the last.
Your comment on "junior partners" is not at all accurate: often, guys like Jay Blasi at Chambers Bay or Andy Staples at Sand Hollow get credit throughout the industry, even if they are not the name on the top-100 lists. But anyway, Darius was not on Mike's payroll, he was a consultant to the developer . . . and now that the client is no longer involved and the new owners have no idea who did what, it's easier to stake a claim.
Darius clearly considers himself a golf course architect now. Taking credit for Cape Wickham has always been part of his plan, but now he's trying to compete directly with Mike Clayton & Mike DeVries so he has staked his claim publicly. And I don't read it as taking part credit; I think he tried to take most of the credit, and labeled his co-designer as "difficult" for good measure. [I am somewhat familiar with such slurs.]
Luckily both parties have brand-new projects they can claim as their own, and will be able to show what they can do without the other, and it would probably be best if they both just focused on that, instead of who undermined whom ten years ago. At the rate things are going in Australia they should just cross their fingers Cape Wickham is still open by then.
P.S. Also LOL for "Cape Wickham is in discussions with Sand Hills as the premier modern course in the world"