Mike:
You don't know that CBM sent the agreement to the press. You've constantly speculated that he used the press for publicity. You and I disagree on this point, for a number of reasons. Foremost, I don't think he gave a crap what the general public thought. His concerns were with the folks he saw face to face, the founders, the guys he wanted to sign up for his endeavor. The press was more interested in him than he was in them.
You are neglecting to take into account what we know about the man. He didn't work in half measures, he didn't sweat the BS. He was building the first "ideal" course in the U.S., and if you wanted to get a ticket on his train then pony up the $1000.
As for finalizing his thoughts on the ideal, perhaps it wasn't what he saw, it was the act of putting it down on paper, of mapping out his final set of templates, that led him closer to the 200 acre number. Perhaps it was actually seeing the land that he would end up buying. Perhaps it was a combination of the two, seeing how the holes he wanted to build would work on that land, what areas were usable for those purposes, and what areas weren't.
When you buy 200+ acres, and the golf course you build on those 200+ acres fits within the customized boundaries of that area with only a modicum of extra land (much of it in the interior of the course), you're not thinking about extra land for 1.5 acre plots of land for a bunch of millionaires whose only unbuffered property lines are on the Upper East Side.
Sven