Mike (and Wayne),
That NY Times article is inconclusive. For example, Tuxedo Park had an "Alps" hole as of 1894. Was it a template hole or just a hole named "Alps"?
The case for: the green was blind and sat over a hill.
The case against: described as a hole whose "duplicate would be hard to find anywhere in the world." It was a 146-yard par 3.
Calling it an "Alps hole" doesn't make it an Alps Hole, if you catch my drift.
Crossing the ocean and devolving significantly (sorry for the ramble!), the use in the English language of the word "redan" precedes the Crimean War by a good 50 years. It simply meant a raised battlement that was leveled off.
The word often is believed to be Russian and which entered the English language as a formal noun attached to a Russian-named fortification. This is false. "Redan" was a name given by the British to one of the major forts defending Sebastopol. The Russians didn't name it Redan.
So by Rhic's excellent research, two vets return home to N Berwick, see the raised green and think, "Redan," i.e., the fortification in the Crimean.
The green, raised as it was, resembled a standard redan fortification. But in its fearsome challenge, the hole earned the formal noun: the soldiers made a direct link to their wartime experience and named it after the Crimean "Redan."
But there could have been redans on golf courses all across the country. Such holes could well have been built to mimic generic redans. Not only that, people named other things "Redan," like horses. Not sure we've seen any "template" Redan racehorses, though!
Which is kind of my point: the word was around a long time, lots of things might have been named redan -- and then that Crimean fort managed to earn a capital-R "Redan," after which the N Berwick hole, owing to its being named after this specific fort, earned same.
But the soldiers didn't "template" the hole, they just drew a parallel, just stuck a name on it.
So the first template Redan hole would not be N Berwick's, for it was simply named much as other holes are, not for a set of principles but for a likeness or defining feature. Just like the "Alps hole" at Tuxedo.
The first template would have to be whoever took the underlying principles of how the hole played, then gave a name to those principles: "Redan" as concept.
None of this is probably helpful and even worse looks like a horrible case of showing off but honestly I spent a chunk of last winter looking into the Crimean War owing to my interest in a few photographs plus the N Berwick hole and am grateful an outlet sprung up for this peculiar compulsion!
Mark