Sean A: I could not agree with you more about Yeamans Hall and their maintenance priorities. Of course, it helps them a bit that they are in a climate zone where the grass goes dormant part of the year and makes life easier ... but all you've got to do is look at their roughs for a great example.
Where most new courses have some sort of bermuda roughs which is fertilized and watered, a lot of the roughs at Yeamans Hall are something that Jim Yonce calls "smutgrass." (I don't know if that's the real name or he just made it up.) Whichever, the grass is moderately functional and requires VERY little maintenance ... and there is no pressure from the membership to spray the roughs to keep a pure stand of smutgrass. Of course, an architect would be pilloried if he suggested planting the stuff; I don't even know if you can buy it, because the turfgrass industry is all about GREEN grass.
Years ago at High Pointe, my friend Tom Mead suggested that if we wanted good contrast between the fairways and roughs, we should order the poor performers in the seed company turf trials, because they would be the ones to go brown the quickest.