In May of 1909 Walter Travis was in Maryland playing at Chevy Chase and the original Columbia golf course from 5/14 through 5/17, returning again to Chevy Chase on 6/13. Given his close friendship with Dr. Harban, it seems unlikely that he was viewing the property of the new course for Columbia in October as the article above implies.
Your dates are slightly off, but that probably isn't really important.
What is important is that Columbia was in the process of deciding where to move in May and June of 1909, and the club didn't make a decision until the end of June. A select committee, of which I can find no record of Harban being a member, recommended two sites to the club (the first meeting regarding site selection occurred on June 16th). On June 30th the club elected to go with the new site in Chevy Chase. By all accounts, Harban became more involved with the club and its new course after it was decided to build the new course, so no matter how close he and Travis were that friendship proves nothing absent evidence of his involvement with the actual initial design of the new CCC.
Is it possible that Travis saw the Chevy Chase site? Yes, but that doesn't mean he had anything to do with its design, which didn't start until after the decision to procure the land. And there is nothing I've read that would lead me to be convinced that he had seen the land prior to his visit as described in the Oct. 1909 article above.
I think we're getting bogged down in the minutiae of circumstantial evidence and the mind games of speculation. Words such as "unlikely," "essentially" and "seems" being thrown around don't help. It is what you do when you're stretching to support a preconception. The thought that just because Travis was in Pinehurst he was "accessible" to Richmond carries no weight to me. If Travis visited Richmond it would have been reported. Just about everything the man did received press coverage at that time.
What we do know is pretty basic.
1. Travis had written that the best practice for a club building a new course or updating an old one was to seek out the advice of a professional.
2. Travis was encouraging Barker to pursue his career in architecture and was recommending him for work.
3. Travis was highly focused on his playing career during the 1908 to 1911 time period (your 1909 playing dates miss a number of tournaments he participated in, both in the Met area and elsewhere including again in Atlantic City in April).
4. Barker played a small amount of tournament golf, and was traveling extensively to visit club's where work was being proposed or was to take place.
I have no doubt that Travis was involved in some way in the work Barker was doing, whether it be on the recommendation side or actually offering advice on design concepts (aka supervising). But he wasn't the guy on the ground, walking the sites, staking out the courses. There is plenty of evidence that this was Barker, on his own.
I keep going back to the idea of Travis hiding any design work. It just doesn't make any sense. There are instances from this time period of design suggestions he made being covered in the press, his Fall 1908 visit to Essex County being one example. Why would he have to hide anything. No club was going to pay him, and he certainly wasn't going to accept any money. So if he did offer advice or was even more involved in any work, what was the harm in having that story told?