When Cobb's Creek opened, it was contended that the two lengthy walks on the course were purposefully done to "spread out play", in an effort to speed things along on a public course. In fact, anyone who has played it would recognize that the walk from the then 17th green (today's 11th) to the 18th tee (about 50 yards left of today's tee) was 350+ cardiac-inducing yards down one steep embankment and up another and hardly fast-play inducing..
Along with the obvious fallaciousness of that supposed rationale, it seems to really not have been the case, or at least the primary concern, but instead a bit of PR to explain what was an obvious glitch.
The
real problem was that Fairmount Park originally would not let the original designers remove any trees, so the course really had to be routed around them.
Joe Bausch has an article somewhere which if he ever finds it
talks about how they wanted to build a different eighteenth hole originally, but were unable to due to trees.