Lynn: I wish I had time to get on the dozer more often, but if I did so too much, I'd miss out on the great stuff that all my associates contribute when I'm not bothering them. I suspect that I had to get on that hole at Ballyneal because I was speaking up too much and not giving them a chance to come to the right conclusion themselves.
But, I still love to shape every once in a while. It is an entirely different process to design when you are shaping the green yourself. If I knew exactly what I wanted, then I'd just describe it to someone else and let them build it, but sometimes you've just got to get your hands in the dough. And it is nearly always the case that somewhere over the 2-3 hours it takes to rough in a green, the half-finished product starts to remind me of some hole I wasn't thinking of when I started, and the design morphs into a different and more interesting direction.
There are probably one or two greens on every course where we start over, or at least make a major change after the first try at building the green. Some plan-based designers try to paint that as wasteful, but when you are renting dozers by the month, my sitting on it for three extra hours does not cost a significant percentage of the construction bill. In fact, I was reading through Thomas' book the other day and he wrote the best possible defense of (paraphrasing here, my memory is getting bad) "the man who can create as he works, molding the land to his vision," as being even more efficient than plasticine models or detailed plans.
The trick is, you just have to be sure that your first attempt doesn't tear up some piece that you will later wish you had left alone.