Phillipe,
I think we agree on many points. As to a basic philosophy, there is the:
"Pick it up where ever your design happens to block it" theory and
The "road engineering theory" where each hole is raised, or the surrounds lowered, to make sure no overland flow crosses critical areas, just as no uphill drainage ever hits a road - it is collected in a ditch at the side of the road and piped under. In those cases, there isn't mucn need to a lot of basins in the fw.
There is also the "Zone Drainage" theory, which recognizes that sheet flow turns to concentrated flow at about 300 feet. In reality, there are charts for that and its a matter of keeping water velocity under 5 feet per second after turf establishent, and if you have no straw blanket/liners during grow in for erosion control, under 3 Ft per Sec while the soil is bare during grow in to reduce problems. Sometimes, a wooded site means you prefer to pick up the drainage inside the hole perimeter to avoid taking out trees. And then picking it up in less crtical areas between LZ's is a great idea. If allowing 250 foot maximum run, the catch basins in the fw would be spaced about 500 feet apart, which would only be three per tyical fw.
The last theory is to accept the pipes in the fw, and then grade for the design you want, since its usually an easy matter to add a few extra catch basins to pick up small areas. As Phillipe notes, construction must be good and gravel or sand should be placed well around the CB, because the inlet areas can tend to get soggy if poor construction.
Of course, I think most gca's also undersize catch basins, which are the limiting factor in drain system capacity inadvertantly. In the desire to keep them small and less visible, they are often not engineered to take the water that will flow into them, and then the water sits around the basin getting it soggy, a situation from which it never recovers.
While many here extoll the supposed Golden Age theorys of long swales, the facts still remain that in the old days,those long swales got and stayed wet, just as they do today and that those courses have added many, many french drains and cb's over the years. As I tell superintendents, "you won't add drainage every year, just the years you work here."
And subsurface drainage is really a funny animal. You find it, you add drain tiles to pick it up, going well beyond the visible problem, and then next year, it shows up another 30 yards past your last tile!
Melvyn,
Also a snappy answer, but in reality, those of us build golf courses have learned to NEVER rely on the eye to check grades. The eye plays tricks, whereas the surveyors level doesn't.