Richard,
One can only speculate how ancient golf was played, probably very erraticly, however the original game simply had a point to play to, which was the beginning and the end of each hole.
These points were marked out and I would speculate that the original lines of play were not designed to have changes of angle of more than 22.5 degrees after 200 or 250 yards or more.
If one chose to play at a different angle from the straight line, for whatever reason that didn’t make the hole a Dog Leg in the modern understanding of the word.
It would be interesting to hear from our distinguished historians when the term “Dog Leg” first entered the golfing vocabulary, and which golf course architects claimed to have one.
Maybe Melvyn can show us a layout of one of Old Tom Morris’s golf courses where a fairway is deliberately drawn with a large angle – or did he not draw any plans.
I don’t suppose he hammered in a post at the turning point in the fairways when he was staking out his new golf courses, as is the current practice nowadays.