More often than not, commercial success and overall units makes an artist successful. And if the aim is to sell on a mass scale, compromise usually abounds.
The best art is almost always created for the creator himself, no one else.
Ally,
Back in college, we always debated what might happen if we were allowed total creativity to pursue "pure design." I.e., we wanted on pesky restrictions the professors tried to impose on the student projects. Alas, there really is no such thing, and design is different from art, although art is a component of good design.
In the case of greens, in truth, form follows function, and function is the first order of business on the typical green design, although this group likes to imagine every course is on pure sand, reducing costs, for an owner will to spend unlimited funds on ongoing maintenance. Alas, that is rarely the case, as you well know.
For others, you should realize that the business and maintenance ends are nearly always more important than the creativity. We as architect live for that 2% of design that allows us to be out of the box creative, but for only a few is that a reality to have more than that amount of freedome.
Typically, a green needs about 6000 SF to have enough pin spots, which keeps most of it pretty flat. More contours mean you need a bigger green. If I proposed 7-8000 SF greens, most supers would complain and owners ask why am I demanding they build (at about $6-7 per SF or at least $100K in "unnecessary spending") and then maintain up to 20% more green (at XX? per SF annually) than they really need to?
Yes, that line of thinking goes a long way to explaining the near standardization of features many complain about in modern design, but it is prevalent.
And, as explained, one response for those who want a few creative greens is to make a few smaller and flat, allowing you that extra square footage to make a few larger and rolling.....and I am drawing one of those bigger rolling ones right now, causing me to pause and respond! I don't like courses that are "small green or large green" courses, but prefer an eclectic one with a variety of size, contours, hazards, etc. Which is a kind of creativity, I think.