I recently read 'Blink' by Malcolm Gladwell. It's a study of rapid congition and it's positive and negative impacts upon our lives. I recommend it to anyone who tends to overthink decisions. Well, the first half of the book anyway.
One of the key points is his assertion that experts in a given field are able to make split second decisons, judgements, without thinking things over, or reasoning logically. And they tend to be right. His best example is a statue purchased by Getty Museum. Extensive testing was done to prove it's authenticity. And yet when certain experts in the field saw it they simply smelt a rat - it just 'looked wrong'. More tests were conducted, and ultimately it was exposed as a very well constructed fake.
I suspect that when Tom D looks at shaping work on one of his projects, he immediately sees it as right or wrong. What takes time is the process of establishing the guilty element(s) at work and then imparting this perspective to the shaper so that it makes sense. He can do this because he has studied, has experience, AND he knows and trusts his own aesthetic.
On the other hand, the routing of a course is not something that can be done on instinct alone. Sure, he may walk a property and instantly 'see' a hole, or a green site, and this may turn out to be fantastic. But this hunch, this feeling, needs to be assimilated and filed away with others, and the routing must ultimately come from a slow cognitive process which evaluates multiple pros and cons.
So the importance of time is not a constant. There will be instances where a deadline forces a mental state upon the architect which is ultimately beneficial, he may be forced to choose A over B with no other reasoning beyond gut feeling. Another architect, less sure of his own aesthetic, may not do so well in this situation.
In my field, I see some parallels. Writing a song can take 5 minutes, or 5 years. I see no correlation, in my work, between the songs which have ultinmately proved strongest, and the time taken to compose. I know of a Leonard Cohen song that he spoke of in interviews for many years - I think it took ten years to complete - I don't rate it as one of his better songs by any stretch.
On the other hand, taking 20 songs and choosing 10 or 12 to make a 45 minute album requires a process closer to routing. Some songs must be sacrificed to make the whole better. The 'big' song, need not always lead the way, in fact, more often than not, it will diminish the whole if it does (but many artists and record companies still insist upon it, as some developers still want their signature hole to dictate the routing). Ultimately the best lead off song is one which makes you want to keep listening, and doesn't make the song following it seem weak, or slow.. this cannot be done by front loading an album. Establishing the ideal running order is not something which can be done with rapid cognition. Knowing the lead off track may be, but putting the pieces together is time consuming.