IIRC, Ron Whitten had something to do with the growing recognition among golf and GCA enthusiasts that there was a place where one could go to practice minimalism and get back to original design and terrain aspects of the ancient game. He talked about it in the Cornish and Whitten book. As a native of Nebraska, he was well familiar with the sand hills and the endless land of sand and grass possibilities. I think he was an early advocate to Dick Youngscapp after DY's Firethorn success, to look west into the sand hills for a unique possibility for a golf development like we had not seen prior.
I would yield to Tom Doak or someone in the early Dye entourage of young designers and shapers to fact check if I am on course with these now vague recollections.
But of course, minimalism itself wasn't nothing new. Just as Jaeger suggests, the very desire for finding an efficient and less costly way to develop and design a golf course offering authentic and traditional 'old sod' links experience points to minimalism, and a sandy loamy sight where turf can be grown and maintained at minimal costs, and feature design could tread lightly on interesting rolling terrain.
I think that the era of the big bombastic projects where developers wanted to inject their ego to tame the land into a show stopper golf and mansion district development, or lavish resort set the table for the anti-thesis of return to minimalist movement, when knowledgeable golfers who were familiar with the ancient game on the old sod decided that what was being turned out in the mega lavish and expensive projects was not really adding anything substantive to the game nor its enjoyment nor availability to more golfers rather than restricting it to fewer players by virtue of access and cost.
Now, I feel that we have entered a paradox in terms and intent when we see minimalism practiced for both the pure aspects of designing a course of play for a game of traditional and authentic characteristics, yet with extravagant resort style amenities of lavish club houses and upscale hotel lodgings, which are true to the golf course minimalism, yet undermine the accessibility to the many who would like to experience the golf, but can't afford the cost of freight. And of course some of that can't be helped due to the remote places minimalism needs to go to find the right site conditions. catch-22 it seems.
My beloved Wild Horse gets a bit of both positive aspects (positive in my mind anyway) of minimalism on excellent terrain to design greatness, and applying the economic aspect of minimalism to provide a more widely accessible to many venue in terms of cost.
I'm not sure what they will do with Wolf Pointe, but that also has the minimal aspect where many benefits of design and economical efficiency to operate could be turned into a great public experience. Hoping that will someday be the case.
Sand Hills was inevitable in all its evolved features and concepts of minimalism of design/ construction efficiency on excellent terrain, if you ask me. True golf enthusiasts were always going to seek to re-create the great playing aspects of the ancient game and fields upon which it originated. The modern and well healed golfer was just going to also require some creature comforts and Youngscapp's vision gave them the perfect setting.