Growing up, there were fifty courses within ten miles of my house, and my Dad took me to all of them. Some were simple, flat and cheap. Others were new and higher priced and very popular despite being extremely penal. This was the sixties.
When I was around 12, I was very vocal about the holes I thought were great versus the ones that were boring. The ones I liked had multiple paths to the pin and offered some sort of risk/reward. While in high school I tried to persuade several course to change their layout in order to make some holes more interesting.
My dad had an 120 acre 'farm' in SW Michigan that was part hilly, part flat, part wooded and 100% sand. I laid out a course and wanted my Dad to build it but he told me grass wouldn't grow on sand! He said that his Dad and he tried for years to grow anything and all the land was good for was potatoes. And even then you had to plant them with slices of onions so the eyes would water. Now, 55 years later, it's a golf course. Of course.
The only top course I played until my 60's was Pebble Beach in 1969 when I was 20. I expected beauty, and found it, but was disappointed by the poor maintenance (seemingly to me). My memory is of the waste area on 8 that required 175 yd drive to clear, and lots of weeds and bare sand. Yes, I was naïve. My opinion then was 1/3 incredible "WOW" holes, 1/3 okay-very good holes, and 1/3 boring holes.
In my 30's I made models of the courses that intrigued me at the time, at a scale of 1mm = 1 yard.
Merion, TOC, Seminole, NLGA and Oakland Hills were the ones that impressed me, although I never laid eyes on any of them.
Finally, at 63 I went to Scotland and I cannot find words to describe my feelings. Joyous rapture? I remember walking for hours with a huge grin on my face. Golfing heaven. And that prompted me to get interested in GCA again.
Apologies to all for getting carried away.