Firestone Too Long?

Golfonline's Joe Passov reviews his five favorite Robert Trent Jones designs, and notes this about Firestone:

By the late 1980s, Firestone South had run into a wall of criticism. "It's too long. It's too hard. It's too boring." Indeed, most of Firestone's holes run parallel to one another and the majority of greens are elevated and fronted by bunkers, lending a certain sameness to the proceedings. Yet, in 2006, the course isn't outrageously long by modern standards and a new generation of pros has come to appreciate the layout's straightforward virtues.

Hard to imagine that a course deemed "too long" just two decades ago is now the home of mostly driver-wedge par-4s.