I mean, surely Bobby Weed didn’t just forget about water or mess up. They must have just planned for a certain amount of water capacity and understood that beyond that certain level, the course would flood. And then put that all in legal documents that everybody signed. Right?
It would be rare if the design contract was clear about something like this.
Having looked at the site several years ago, I would not have caught that the canals might flood it at the time of signing a contract. But if it came up as a possibility during planning, we would have certainly discussed the probability of flooding vs the cost of raising all of the fairways. I just hope it came up at some point!
When we did The Rawls Course, the University put the engineers under my contract so I would be responsible for such things. I discuss the ramifications in my book. Building the course without imported fill made it a large bathtub, so we had to be extra extra sure that no sheet flow from a storm event drained into the bathtub!