People don't like to admit these things about their heroes but the evidence is that Fowler was a bit thick. His brother was an Oxford man, but he didn't attend university (or even a top public school), which surprised me when I found it out, given his background. To say he wasn't business-savvy as Sean does is something of an understatement -- he was a business disaster, who, if Cosmo Bonsor hadn't had the idea of converting Walton Heath to golf, would have had to file for bankruptcy, in those days much more serious than it is now. He fell into golf design because he had very few options as to what else he could do at that point, but he kept investing in some seriously unprepossessing ventures, as obscure as seal hunting. He became a director of the San Antonio and Pecos Valley Railway Company just before WW1, God knows how. Fortunately for him, he proved to be very good at the profession he found by accident.
A lot of my views on Fowler the designer have been influenced by Sean Arble. I don't think there has ever been a major architect who was less tied to any signature aesthetic or style. At Beau Desert, he built some really quite severe greens; at Delamere Forest at almost the same time, he built one of the quietest sets of greens you will ever see on a course of such quality. For most of his career, he built relatively simple bunkers; late on, at the Berkshire, he embraced a full on lacy edge, perhaps under the influence of his partner Simpson (but we should note that there is no evidence at all of Simpson ever setting foot on the Berkshire property during construction....
He was an enigma.