When doing some hobbist routing, on real land, with 2" ele topos, and spending several days walking the land, on very different terrain sites, I found it worked best to find as many potential good green sites as possible, then work back to the best looking LZs, then to a possible approach to the LZ from a potential tee, from on high, occasionally from below (but not too much) or roughly level. I tried to look for LZs on first LZ par 5s and TPs of par 4s that had a good 75-100 yards of usable width, ~100 yards of depth and natural roll or slope.
My two most disparate pieces of land were what I still believe is as good of a piece of land as you could dream of in the sand hills, and the other was 280 acres of Wisconsin dairy farm land with a meandering 'navigable' stream through a 20-30ft deep basin that ranged from 50 to 200 yards wide, and unremarkable gently rolling cornfield land taking up about 2/3rds of the property.
On the sand hill land, there were greensites galore...probably similar to the constellation map legend of SHGC. You had so many choices, and with 800 acres to play with, you could not help but find the choice LZs, blowouts to incorporate in LZs or near greensites and exciting rolls in the land. That was just so much fun, that I can't really describe the kick I got out of the process... maybe some of the best fun I have ever had related to golf.
On the WI farm land, I found 8 nice green sites down in the creekway basin or on the ledges above, and worked back from there to logical approach directions to a TP and then look for a tee to set up to the LZ in an interesting way.
It seems to me, that with a more compressed unremarkable acreage, you have to go more from tee to green, than where you have oodles of choices. Where there are at least 7-12 good-great greensites, you are more in the green backwards sort of mode.
But, the feature placements on most projects, beyond the use of natural slopes and rolls, is a matter of construction and placement for strategy. Your shaper, and your feel for the game drives those placements, shapes and utimately strategy. Since those situations are where you create the strategy via shaping and contouring, you are only as good as your construction crew, and your common golf sense and imagination.
I'm really liking Paul Cowley's post on this matter because he seems to be the most flexible as to the approach.
And, to paraphrase my old bootlegging grandpa, 'never trust an archie that doesn't have a drink while out there for long hours doing the routing and strategy'.
