Stuart Bendelow mentions that in the time frame of 1905 that Tom Bendelow had already been recognized as having designed some 500 courses with his association with Spaulding co. Adding this:
"Bendelow's design features evolved along with the game. Where Topograpic[sic] maps existed, he used them to enhance his layouts."
I think on some of the major projects, like East Lake, he probably had topos. Then, when he took over American Park Builders from Langford in 1917, he probably used topos quite a bit. The fact that he made plasticine models, probably meant he needed topos to transfer the terrain data from the elevation data of the topo to the 3-d model.