I spent a few years in college working on a golf course crew, and think it served me well over the years as general background. Of course, things change and we always need to keep up. I constantly ask supers about their programs, and on my projects, ask what five things kill them most in the ease of maintenance dept., in hopes of avoiding that mistake again.
While aware of new regulations, chemicals and practices, I certainly am not an expert in greens keeping, and our main focus is how design may make maintenance harder or impossible. Sometimes that means knowing your sun angles (in all seasons....up in Northern MN, it seems you have to clear all the way to Lake Superior to let the morning sun in! Or, route holes where the morning sun naturally comes in, at least to the range, and holes 1-3 and 10-12, if possible.
Soil compaction usually occurs from cart traffic, sometimes in combo with over or under irrigation, so it must be considered in path layout. Or, eliminating those compacted strips on corners, usually by knowing the turning radius of a cart at full speed (usually about 55 feet)
Back in my Killian & Nugent days, they used to keep the lobes of bunkers at 20 feet to accommodate sand pros, and I usually followed suit. One day, it occurred that power sand rakes have updated, and I measured the turning radius, which allowed me to reduce bunker lobe size to 16 feet on courses where it was imperative to match such things for maintenance ease.
Later, it occurred to me that with bunker liners, sand could be even narrower, since it would likely be hand raked, and started thinking about the most efficient way to get capes mowed, etc.
Sometimes, chemical changes affect design, or turf choices, which affect design. Will that new poa suppressant really allow us to use bent grass here, etc.?
There are a million little examples like that, of how maintenance affects design. (well, maybe a thousand.....) and an experienced architect should be aware of most of them, even if the business plan says a better design to attract customers may allow you to ignore many of them.
The funny thing is, over time, even at $100 golf courses, I usually see hard to maintain features changed to something more manageable anyway. Sometimes you have that difficult choice of designing something really, really cool (for ten years) or something that will last a lot longer at the possible cost of the nearly ultimate wow factor.