Mark,
You are absolutely correct. Just as any art critic can spot the work of a Monet or a VanGough (or somebody trying to emulate their style), so it goes with golf design.
Whether writing a book, a piece of music or a golf course, it is only natural that any body of work is going to have a common thread. When I write something, what comes out of my pen is not the same every time, but there are always similarities in terms of style.
Every sequence of notes that David Gilmour plays is different, but the very first sound that comes out his guitar immediately identifies who is playing it.
Yeah yeah, *true artists* try to "stretch themselves." Fine, but that is not what the client wants when he hires a particular architect.
If Tom Doak is hired to build a golf course and as part of some kind of bullshit "personal-journey-of-experimental-artistic-discovery" it ends up looking like Art Hills designed it, everybody - especially the client - is going to be pissed.
The reason you go out of your way to play a C&C course is that you love what falls out of their pencil on different pieces of ground.
Style is good. Say what you will, but if you go to a Jack Nicholson movie and he tries to stretch himself into a putrid, sappy version of Alan Alda, you are going to throw your coke and popcorn at the screen and stalk out by the third scene.
The Grateful Dead were wildly successful because they were the very best Grateful Dead band in the world. That does not mean you do the same thing over and over. It does mean that you remain true to what comes NATURALLY out of your brain.
Hemmingway did not try to write like Faulkner. The minute most artists fail is when they cease to be true to their tendencies. Both were geniuses. There is no confusion as to their style.
Not everybody is going to like everything. That is why we have critics. Style can evolve. Look at Charles Schultz's drawings from the early days. Charlie Brown evolved with his skills as a cartoonist.
But the character was still Charlie Brown.