Don,
Routing and Design Features are separate issues, IMHO.
I seriously doubt any practicing architect routes a course ignoring basic drainage patterns. Greens and Tees on hills, or cut in upslopes to keep them out of major drainage is key. On a rolling site, obviously, some fairways will cross drainage swales.
In bridge engineering, there is an old rule of thumb that the cost of piers should equal the cost of spans. I find the same is true in draining golf courses - the cost of earthmoving versus the cost of drainage ought to be about equal!
If in a swale, I could raise the fairway with 50,000 yards of earth, keep it as it, and add $50,000 worth of pipe, or raise it slightly, like an enginner would raise a road to keep surface water from flowing across it (there for car safety, in golf, to keep the critical fw turf from getting too much water) and probably spend less, and keep the land more natural by adding a few basins where we have interupted natural flow.
On flat sites like TPC, more catch basins are inevitable. If you assume that we wouldn't grade any ridges in the center of the fairway higher than 4 feet, to preserve vison down the fairway, and a minimum slope of 3% on the fairway, then on a perfectly flat site, maximum flow lines would be 132 feet, and you would need a basin about every 266 feet! Dye actually used more FW slope, and 2-4 foot ridges, and if I recall, basins are about every 80 feet there - probably influenced by ease of construction - 4 20 foot sections of pipe, and then slap on the basin, and grade to it......I could be wrong, but I paced off several there, and 80 feet seemed typical.
Basins in the fairway are also typical on a wooded site, since you would have to take down too many trees to get the drainage out in the far rough.
In housing, the golf course will be put primarily in swales so the houses can have a view down to the course. There, you accept that you have to take on a lot of drainage from above, and plan for it.
As to the 1938 hurricane, that - and other drainage data is availalbe to us now, and of course, we try to plan the course for as bad a flood event as budget allows, a luxury old designers didn't have, or didn't consider.
Many forget that the old, "natural" courses have added drainage practically every year that they have been in existence to continually correct problems they experience. I sent my first computer draftsman to the Cornish/Graves seminar, as he was an Indian fellow with no knowledge of golf. Our drainage budgets were from $100-200K at the time. He noticed that Geoff said golf course drainage should be $50K, and asked about the difference. Geoff's response was that if you add in all the drainage the super adds in the first five years, it probably totaled the same amount......It's an ongoing process, and I, for one, don't see the problems in trying to anticipate those when building the course in the first place.
I also suspect that the lower relative cost of PVC pipe shapes designers thought process. When the old guys had to lift concrete or clay pipe with a crane (which was necessary into the 70's) it was too expensive for golf course budgets. With the lightweight plastic pipes, the unit prices are so low - and really haven't gone up in ten years, it becomes a much more cost effective solution. For that matter, earthmoving is a real bargain compared to the old days (back to the 70's for me, unit prices haven't budged - the cost of horses and scoops would be astronmical in todays prices) and if you take the two together, it really does shape modern design thinking.