Bryan,
I don't know, if you were out hunting game, on land you were very familiar with, for decades, that you'd be thinking, "hey, this would make a great dogleg par 4 with the tee over there and the green over here." And, don't forget, this is 1909, it's not like there were golf courses every five miles in every direction. While GCGC had been open for a decade, NGLA was just opening and golf and golf course architecture were in their infancy in America.
Somehow, Mike and others want to confer Bill Coore like talents and years of experience upon a pure novice, 100 years earlier..
So, we have a golfer, hunting in the woods, no doubt familiar with them, but in the context of a hunter, not a golf course architect and not three (3) years prior to pursuing the land.
If he actively pursued the land in 1909 I might give the "field" effort more weighting, but, the task didn't take form until the fall of 1912. If Carr is to be believed, that the land was forest and underbrush, it seems hard to believe that unaided, GAC could visualize the masterpiece that exists today. purely or primarily via field expeditions.
Understanding a topo, once the proximity of the lines are explained to you is fairly easy.
With a little time and experience, understanding, reading and interpreting topos becomes easier and easier.
One would imagine that within a month one would be rather proficient at reading topos.
A common earlly theme leads one to believe that surveyors/engineers, not seat of the pants hunting guides, held the key to the land and the golf courses built on them. Frances, Raynor, Toomey, etc., etc.. Surely, Crump would seem to have had to retain someone who could provide those services. Perhaps early surveys reveal the firm/individual and if that firm/individual had prior golf course eperience.
The next issue is, when did Colt first come to PV.
The exact date/s are signficant.
It's said that Crump prefered field testing shots to schematics, but, you couldn't field test until the property was cleared.
Perhaps that explains the 22,000 trees that were removed.
But, wouldn't you remove them from the area intended to be golf holes ?
And if so, wouldn't you have figured that out on maps/topos rather than field walks.
I know, many will say it was both, but, I'm not so sure that the bulk of the credit shouldn't go to topos/surveys.
That's all for now, I have other project to tend to and the police in Newtown Square, PA just called me,
Seems that some deranged resident is wandering the streets, riding a bicylce, dressed in a kilt and high heeled sneakers claiming that he can fnid his way from Newtown Square, to Southampton, NY, then back to Clementon, NJ, strictly with the 87 topo maps he's carrying in a napsack, in less than 107 days.