I guess much has to do with who you learned from. I have always be proud of our routings because they were the premise of the design. Much can be derived from pouring over a 2' topo map. It doesn't lie. I know many on this board get all misty-eyed at the idea of tromping around a couple hundred acres and "finding" all the "really cool" features/golf holes. But, in my experience, this is harder done than said. It is very easy to mis-judge scale. It's the GOLDY LOCKS syndrome. Flat land looks smaller than it really is, hilly/forested land looks/feels bigger than it really is. And when you go through the various stages of construction, these "feelings" will change. But if you plan it right and hold to that plan, in the end it will come out "just right".
I think it is the underlying desire for most architects to do as much with as little as possible. But there are always trade-offs so I don't think a blanket statement is very useful. Never deal in generalities when you have to work in specifics. Just look at Tom Doak's post where he stated he had his guys spend a couple of weeks moving a huge amount of material off just 1 fairway (probably more material than he moved in total at some courses) but, in his vision, it was what was needed in order for the course to be all it could be. Will, as Don states, this large amount of earthwork make the course more expensive to maintain? I doubt it, Heck, it might even end up being cheaper. In many instances, maintenance's common denometer is a function of area. followed by drainage. Luckily, this excess material had a home on C&C's course so the expenditure was shared and the benefit was by both courses. Not bad for 2 firms that are held up on this board as minimalists extrodinair. And my guess is, when done, no one will be able to guess what was there before.
As to the orignial question. I would be amazed if anyone knew of a high-caliber course that didn't have extensive earthwork done around the green complexes. And for sites that didn't already contain a 2+ acre lake for irrigation, we were using 300,000 cy of excavation and 100,0000 cy of topsoil strip and replace when I first got into this business 35 yrs ago. Bear in mind that most of our site were flat farm fields. As the sites got smaller, the earthwork went up, mostly for separtion and safety reasons. But, like I said earlier, this didn't really expand the maintenance requirement, (in fact, many areas were planted in Fescue rather than the bluegree they would have been id left flat. Then trees would have been planted and those, my friends, would have really driven up the maintenance costs.
Irrespective of the nature of the earthwork on a course, it is the ease of the routing in both crculation and use of the natural lay of the land that can make or break s design.