Tom,
I completely agree with everything you said. My point, though, is that for some reason, despite the amounts of money spent to design courses there have always been some which were unacceptable when opened for play and that the memberships/owners were willing to pay large sums of money to redesign and rebuild.
There were also many a case where the main featrures of the course, the bunkers and other hazards, were not built or added to the course until a year or more later after the members could see how the course played and so where they should be put. This, too, may (or not) have added to the overall costs of the course' design after the initial outlay. Could you imagine either taking a design comission based upon that scenario, or more importantly, suggesting that very one to your client? Yet, that is what was done. If you go to the other thread (I'll have to look up which one) where Joe Bausch posted the Marine Park article from the brooklyn Eagle in the teens, a member quoted Tilly who had recently visited the course and commended them for not installing the bunkers yet for that very reason! He supposedly told them that it would save them a good deal of money doing it that way as many a course had to redon all their bunkers because they were designed first and not added in later.
There are also a number of examples of courses in the teens and twenties where $40-50,000 was spent to build a course only to have a similar amount or more spent to redesign it a year or two later. Now, I'm no economist, but I would imagine that $40-50,000 is more than equal to seven figures today.