Tim,
good question. Having been involved with the project for ten years (it's 3 miles from my house) and watched the Pete Dye-Tim Liddy routing evolve about 29X during the permitting process, I can simply tell you a few things that dictated that outcome on the 18th hole.
We were constrained by the town's wetlands commission and the state DEP from further incursion on the right side. In fact, the town wetlands officer actually wanted us to preserve a hedgerow boundary on the right that would have taken away another 20 feet on that side. We won that argument, but not much more. We also had to put the cart path on that side because there's a fairly narrow-width corridor shared by the 18th and 10th holes, and in both cases, the continuous cart path had to go on the outside. We tried moving the tee back, but that put it under the power lines. And we had nowhere to the right to go.
You are correct, it would have made a more challenging hole if it had doglegged to the right and brought the wetlands into play, but we would have spent a fruitless and $$$ time trying to get it permitted.
Welcome to the wonderful world of modern course design. Please note, we built that course through 91 acres of wetlands and held our impact to 10,000 square feet, and in fact created an additional net 2-acres of wetlands in the process.
That's sound environmental design. Unlike those who hate ecologists, I think it can be made to work, even if the holes are not as exacting as they could be. See the latest issue of Golfweek's SuperNews (Oct. 27) for an accounting of the wildlife habitat that's out there: 149 different bird species, 17 mammals, 17 butterflies, etc.
Besides, it's a municipal setting and we have avoided forced carries and been able to do 32,000 rounds annually at an average pace of play of 4:20.