Sagebrush? I think Whitman just found the routing that would work on the landscape. The didn't have enough money to create a course in my understanding.
That's not the case - I toured the course with Dick Zokol and I know for a fact that a LOT of work was done to work the landscape, especially on hole #8.
Dick's quote, if I remember correctly, was "Rod moved a mountain to make that hole".
Matt,
I ran the day-to-day construction at Sagebrush and can tell you, for a fact, that we moved about half as much earth as I originally thought was going to be required to create the course.
Dick's right, we did move a lot of material (including a lot of blasting of rock) to create the fairway at the 8th hole (the tees were elevated, the green site was pretty much there… with some shaping). #5 fairway also required some significant fill, and #11 was a big construction job. But 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 and 18 didn't take much other than filling tee and greens sites, and digging bunkers.
Cabot Links (where I was also heavily involved with planning and construction work) took as much artificial construction work. Rod is a genius at contouring the ground (personally, with a 'dozer), really. His work at Cabot Links will 'trick' many golfers, forever, into thinking those holes were 'found' on natural links-type-land, there. No the case at all, Cabot is more comparable to a Kingsbarns type project than any of the courses at Bandon, for example. There's way more artificial contouring in the fairways at Cabot than Sagebrush.
And, what's it matter… it's just good