Unfortunately, I'm long-winded.
Aside from the engineering side of things, I think most of course design is related to game design in general. More specifically, as an existing game, most of the design in golf is designing the playfield, like
playfield design in pinball, similar to
level design in video games. That is, finding unique and novel ways to use the existing rules and player skills to keep the game interesting.
I don't see the role of the architect as that of an artist, trying to craft their vision, or at least their unique version of experimentation, for the players to engage with.
This is disconnected with the business end of the relationship between the architect and the course operator,
as we don't currently have architect-operators yet. That relationship is probably more on the engineering end in regards to maintenance, upkeep, and cost, which are all designable I presume.
To really talk about the role of the architect we would need to first have a framework for why we play golf in the first place, and I'm not entirely sure we'd have much broad agreement there.