TD,
As someone mentioned, name a course that didn't add a lot of some kind of drainage later on. There probably aren't many, but either they use French drains and dig them up as you found necessary at PD, or they put the basins way out in of play areas, which is probably a result of them putting the main features on highest ground, because they couldn't afford more drainage.
I have told the story before, but I had two guys attend the old Cornish and Graves course. Geoff made the point that they usually put 50K in drainage, and my guys told him in class that we typically spent 150-250K. Geoff pointed out that they probably added 25-50K of drainage at his courses over 5-10 years and it all evens out. So, I guess I felt better about just putting as much of it as you think you need, even though it never turns out to be as much as you need.
Or as one well known super says - "Don't expect to add drainage every year, just the years you work there." I am in the camp that the old courses have added much drainage over the years and we just don't tend to notice it.
And, in the camp of do what ya gotta do, and try to minimize the supers problems the first few years, when he has enough anyway. What ya gotta do, varies from site to site, climate to climate, soil to soil, etc.
Mark, I know examples of CB's causing lazy architecture but I don't think its as prevalent as you think. Certainly in the short term aftermath of the cheaper HDPE pipe, some high end archies experimented with more shaping and basins (value judgers might say over shaping, but hey, it's art, someone was going to try it).
In my case, which I think is pretty typical of the mid range guys, we heard grow in and play complaints from long swales crossing fairways or down fairways, especially from housing, wetness in approaches and cart paths around tees and greens, etc. and cut water off from a few more critical areas, and perhaps loosened up a bit in grading in all swales, catching a few more swales in pipes to avoid those long runs, and maybe a elevating fairways like engineers elevate roads, to keep drainage to the side.
And, of course, on a dead flat site there is little way around them. You could build up an entire fairway to drain somewhere, but its more expensive than some combo of pipe and grading.
Like I say, ya gotta do what you gotta do. It seems to be a small minority who complain about them.
Thomas, one of my most extensive drain systems was in the Las Vegas desert. But, we had houses above the whole golf course, and wanted to pick up all the nuisance water draining off them before it hit the fairway. As the land plan came out, we were not allowed to take any golf drainage short cuts through the housing, so we had a whopper of a trunk line coming down nearly each fairway, plus lots of lateral drains. $600K total cost (in about 2000).
Put it into gravel drain pits you ask? Well, the water table was only a few feet under the surface, so that wouldn't work. In fact, we had another $300K in a herringbone system just to keep the water table where it needed to be (below fairways and houses) All the pipes ran to a lake which had a transfer pump to put it up and over into the Las Vegas wash. So there you have it, almost a million dollars to drain a desert course. Believe me, it surprised me, too.
But, back on topic......I guess aesthetics is a concern, again minimized by putting them out of the major play zones, and maybe, using black covers over those more typical bright green plastic covers?