"Again, it seems to me that at some point the CREATIVE (as oppossed to merely 'functional') role became key, and it was those men who thought in those terms who designed the great golf courses. And by the same token, if the earliest courses were so rudimentary (and didn't involve the need to think about cart paths and earth-moving and irrigation), what was left for the golf professionals/experts to even bring to the table? In that scenario, it does seem very plausibible to me that a few of the earliest professionals were skipping around to various places and 'laying out' a golf course in one day, and then moving on. But would we call that process, and them, golf course architects? Did they even call themselves that? And if their aspirations were so modest, they seem to me well worth remembering, but not necessarily in terms of granting them more credit for the creation/design of a golf course than was originally granted them."
Peter:
This is a point you continue to make, as you should, in my opinion, because you do have the facts of history on the side of your point.
If a Willie Campbell was this great "expert" in architecture in America at that time and if he was considered to be such by those back then we are talking about then where the hell is the proof of it? Where ever was the proof of it? Where is the course or courses that stand testament to him and to that great "expertise" in golf architecture? They just aren't there and they never were.
You make an additional point above that I believe goes directly to the heart of this entire question---eg NOT JUST who had the talent but WHO showed it and how?
For all we know a Willie Campbell and early "jack of all trade" pro/greenkeeper/clubmaker/ 1-2 day peripatetic course "lay-outers may've had every bit as much architectural talent to produce great architectural products as the likes of "amateur/sportsmen" like Leeds, Emmet, Fownes, Macdonald, Wilson, Crump,Thomas, Behr did on the projects that made them famous but generally speaking what is the MARKED difference in the way those two vastly different groups went about it?
It is about as obvious as the noonday sun. That group of "Amateur/sportsmen" designers who became famous with their select courses spent years and in some cases decades on them and the likes of Willie Campbell probably never did spend more than a day or so and then they wer on to something else, probably back to theirs day jobs which were not exclusively golf architecture, that's for sure.
Could a Willie Campbell and some of the jack-of-all-trades immigrant Scots have produced something as great as Myopia, GCGC, Oakmont, NGLA, Merion East, Pine Valley if they had the time and opportunities the "amateur/sportsmen" we are talking about who produced them had?
I see no reason at all to believe they couldn't but the historic fact is they did not and the reasons why are patently obvious, and they're basically the very reasons you just outlined and numerous people on here have out-lined before you.
It is getting maddening to see a few on here just continue to try and make so much more out of something than history itself very clearly shows!