classic course-environmental constraints?

[corey miller]

Much has been made on many threads about the environmental constraints that modern architects must deal with in their work.  Presumably, the golden age guys did not have to deal with these hindrances.  My home course has a hole that plays toward a natural hazard but ends quite a ways away from it.  A long bridge than traverses the stream, which never comes into play on any hole. The bridge runs from greensite to next tee.

An old Tillinghast drawing has play from a tee over the stream on the next tee shot.  Environmental ? money ? taste? Not sure but it makes for a goofy routing.

Does anyone know of an example of a classic course that did not take advantage of a natural hazard and rather went over it much like a modern course would with a cart path?

[Tom_Doak]

Corey:

In most states today, you could not build a green near a creek as at Augusta National or Merion or many old northeastern courses, because of water-quality issues.  It's not a blanket rule, I was very surprised to find out what we could do in Montana, where they are used to clearing large acreages of land right up to natural water features.  

The rules changed in the seventies.  I was very surprised to recognize years ago that Mr. Jones' famous 13th hole at The Dunes is anything but a natural lake line ... they filled well out over a peat bog in order to get the edges of the water hazard just so, and no one cared.  (Part of the fairway might be flagged as a wetland today if they stopped mowing it for a while.)

Ian Andrew noted an example of what you asked for a couple of months ago re: Cape Breton Highlands, but the reason they didn't go for the back tee with a stream crossing was the cost of the bridge, not environmental constraints -- and that course is on the fringe of a national park!