Rick Noyes:
In my opinion, in your post above of less than 20 lines, you've absolutely NAILED the misperceptions on this website and probably amongst so many of us who are very interested in golf architecture, it's history and evolution!
And those misperceptions of ours, generally, revolve around the unsupportable fact that some of these famous and really talented old architects agonized and conducted plenary sessions over ever single mound, bunker, green contour, etc, etc on every single golf course they ever did!
That is simply not so--not even remotely close, in so many more instances than we seem to care to admit!
By saying that though, I certainly don't mean to take anything away from them or many of their products or creations--just that certain obvious facts indicate the unavoidable reality of how they worked and had to.
Ross did a huge amount of courses at certain times and the fact he did as well as he did with that work load says a lot about him and the way he organized his company, and his general modus operandi.
But given that fact with Ross, Tom MacWood may have a bit of a point here which ironically could be supported in a way by Brad Klein! Many of the courses and most particularly their smaller details could and probably did have more to do with other people, and their own work, than it ever did with Ross himself!