On my first handful of designs, there was a need to build an irrigation pond because the wells didn't deliver enough capacity to water the golf course in 8 hours, and I was resigned to the idea that if there was going to be an irrigation pond it needed to be a feature of the course. This resulted in holes like the 18th at High Pointe, the 2nd at Beechtree, and the 16th at Black Forest.
When we started on Apache Stronghold, I just couldn't get past the idea that it was awful to play a hole around an irrigation pond in the desert, and the Tribe had plenty of land, so we built the pond around the corner from the 7th fairway where it was out of sight and out of mind. After that, I am trying to think if I ever again built an irrigation pond that was a feature of the golf course? Maybe once or twice, but I can't think of where. It was like a light bulb went off in my head, you don't need to do it.
I have been lucky to build several golf courses in recent years without a budget -- Tara Iti, Te Arai, Lido, Sedge Valley, Pinehurst #10, and Childress Hall among them. All of those clients were familiar enough with me and with what it took, that they just put a round number on it and were confident I wouldn't exceed it. [I'm told we are $2 million under what they thought at Childress Hall, and I kind of feel like a chump that we didn't charge them more for that.] It is really the ultimate luxury not to have to think about it, but it became a problem when the clients at High Pointe and Sandglass asked a lot of questions about the numbers and we no longer knew the price of eggs! I had to ask my clients at Pinehurst and Sedge Valley what we had actually spent -- and I thanked them for not bothering me about it.
I do think Ally is right, that budget constraints often produce more creative solutions. But I'm always leaning that way to begin with, I'm not the kind of designer who insists on blowing through rock in order to add a bunker. My highest-ranked recent course was the one with the lowest construction budget -- St. Patrick's. So, no, Mark, it's not about the $$$.