Tom,
I listened to part 1 and thought there was some interesting questions asked and answered. I have a follow up question on Routing. What kinds of things can and can't be effectively taught when it comes to routing a course?
Kalen:
I had exactly two hours of training from Pete Dye on how to route a course. It consisted of showing me the plan for The Honors Course, and how he had played most of the long holes across the side of the hill, locating the tees and greens and landing areas on the ridges and hitting over the valleys as they drained down the hill.
The rest, I've had to feel out by thinking through the golf courses I know, and by practicing on my own projects. Getting one's hands on the routings [over topo maps] of famous courses is also quite helpful if you can manage it, so as to understand how they put the puzzle together and what are the "rules" that most great courses follow ... like, how far uphill is too far for one shot, or how much sideslope can you have in a fairway landing area? Lots of architects can tell you rules on those things, but maps of Pasatiempo and Merion show you that many of their rules are breakable.
I have never tried to teach any of my associates or interns too much about routing, because I assume they'll understand better from trial and error and observation. I don't want to give them a bunch of my own silly rules! I think the main skill that's hard to teach is the ability to think in 3-D and to visualize from a topo map. Routings tend to fail due to visibility issues, or getting stuck in a difficult corner with no good way out; the solution is usually to avoid those corners altogether.
The other part of it is understanding which sorts of things can be fixed satisfactorily with earthmoving, and which cannot. If you've got enough money you can always grade something until it sort of works, but there are lots of situations where you will never get it to look right, because of how it has to tie back into the existing ground.