John:
I was talking to Dick Youngscap about this very subject about a month ago. As an architect by trade, and now a golf developer, he's seen both sides of the question.
He was very clear about saying that he thought many clients meddled in the process too much. He thought it was entirely appropriate that the client should state IN ADVANCE what they wanted and why, but that once the work got underway, architecture has a flow of its own and if a client interrupts the flow it is damned near impossible for the architect to get it back. So, he stayed out of the way during the construction of Sand Hills [with one exception that I can remember], and the results were pretty convincing.