Michael:
Why a man like Tweedie from abroad did the kinds of courses he did in America in particularly the 1890s is not really that complicated. The reasons why may be somewhat numerous but they are not all that hard to understand.
I'd be glad to list what those reasons very likely were. The point of it all is there was virtually nothing over here in that last decade of the 19th century that was much different, and that includes Macdonald's Chicago Golf Club course (just look at it and its prevalent cop or steeplechase type hazards).
The point here, at least to me, is if men like Tweedie had been given the time and the opportunity and yes the money as well to do what some of those (generally those few good amateur/sportsmen architects of the late 1890s and early 1900s) had, would they have been able to do as well or even better or worse?
To me that is the question and ultimately it all boils down to the question of how they should really be considered in the realm of their architectural talent.
My feeling has always been that they simply did not have the time, the opportunity and the money those other few had, but if they had had it back then there is no particularly reason I'm aware of to assume they could not have done the same as those others.
Don't forget, those types of architects back then were not exactly doing everything they wanted to do as those select others were; they were basically only doing what they were asked to do, and paid to do, and given the time to do, all of which wasn't much back then. And it showed back then no matter who you were or where you came from.
This is not exactly rocket science and none of us should try to make it rocket science! The additional point is that inland architecture, and probably everywhere that it was in the latter half of the 19th century just had not gotten to the point of some of the more naturally imbued architectural sophistication of some of the linksland holes and courses simply because those inland sites just did not have anywhere near the natural assets and features those linksland courses had and even mostly naturally, and at that point noone had taken the time and the effort and money to try to make them so! That would just begin to change around the turn of the century even though there are a very special and select few inland courses that preceded that on both continents. But the fact is they took a lot more time and money than anything that had come before them, and THAT is what we FIRST need to understand and appreciate!
This is why I've become so fascinated with Myopia. It is not because it was the absolute best in the first decade of the 20th century or the teens or 1920s, it was because it was the FIRST really good architecture over here, in my opinion of course, because it was begun over here in 1896 and 1898 basically the way it is now. Some said Chicago Golf Club was as well back then but the problem is we can never directly know that anymore because unlike Myopia it is quite different today than it was back in the late 1890s.