Mr. RT,
I was thinking of the same question before I read Mark's post, and its more or less what I'm addressing in Jeff Brauer's thread regarding routing.
If it was me, and I was given the directive to route 18 holes, 9 holes. 12 hole or 22, whatever--I would probably would look to walking the property first without a plan, just to get a feel for it. I would more then likely take a pad of paper and jot down the features I thought were interesting and then more or less draw my own idea of the property before even seeing a topo map or plan, just so I could see how close I could get it to actual dimensions. Lets face it, its more then likely going to be way off doing it this way, but I think it would still allow you to get a better fell for what is going on. This is why The Valley Club of Montecito makes such sense to me--and the same with Friar's Head. Both these courses are IMHO perfect examples of making a routing work off of features--not, "Hey, were just going to rip this down and put it back anyway we want."
For example: As convoluted as a property THE VCOM is or was when MacKenzie set out to do his thing, it looks as if he took a negative and made it a pretty cool positive. How can someone get something so perfectly right? The routing is sheer perfection there!
To take it into the modern day, and I don't want to sound too Rah-Rah Bill Coore, but Friar's Head is another that most would have simply tried to have kept the course as much as possible near the water and in the dunes as much as possible. Instead, you have these transistions--brilliant transisitions. Then to continue with it all, are purely natural looking golf holes in what is widley viewed as flat, featureless farm field. Combine it with
man-made fairway contours on those holes that look as if they were left over from water receeding from the last glacier that parked there. Its just brilliant stuff.
So, I guess my point is that it seems like it takes a lot of time to feelthe land and perfect it in your mind how a hole is going to work with-in the routing.
I know this stuff doesn't work when you have a housing project lining the fairways and land planning has established corridors of play--I would hate to have to build something like that which didn't accomplish the truest sense of purpose, "In search For The Very Best Golf."
Naive? Yes I know! But I would rather be naive to the world then not get it right.