Going for broke by extending another thread, but how many architects use template strategies?
Years ago, I authored a piece for one of Paul Daley's early books on tee shot strategies. While there may be hundreds of slight variations on each, I postulated that (assuming the driver is the club) there are only a few basic ways you can challenge golfers with tee shot landing zone hazards. You can ask them to carry them, skirt them laterally, or stay short of them, although certain combos are stronger to suggest they also curve a tee shot around the short one to avoid the long one.
Variations include pinching on both sides for accuracy, staggering them on both sides (assuming at least a gentle dogleg, you can go outside-inside-outside, or inside-outside-inside) with 3 or 4 bunkers/hazard, etc. Of course, depending on the golfer, you are probably really just setting up a one side hazard for that length, or the aforementioned preferred curve.
Or, you can have no hazards, contours as hazards (both cross slope you can use and a combo of flat and more rumpled areas suggesting the best landing spot), a center bunker, or a sort of random pockmarked battlefield of hazards. I consider alternate fairways as a separate tee shot concept, as well as a forced curve around a tree. Add those up, and I think it came out to 14 basic tee shot challenges. I figure you could use each one once on either side of the few (i.e., left or right to challenge different golfers)( MY point in the long winded exercise was to show that there is really no reason for a golf course to have 14 fw with lateral bunkers at the LZ.
Of course, there may be more, but I doubt I would use them willingly, like forced carries vs. alternate carries, and of course, the occasional forced layup, although, forcing the golfer to do anything, rather than giving them the choice is an inferior strategy, so why use them, etc.
As I mentioned in the template thread, combining any one of these with a similar amount of combinations of approach shot strategies or shot requirements/suggestive patterns, and you come up with a lot of strategic options. That said, it doesn't take long to rule some of those out, i.e., forced carry tee shot combined with a forced carry approach shot makes little sense to me and would only be used if forced upon me by some environmental constraints.
In the end, I think each gca, after a while, figures out which shot patterns work best, on which kind of hole and in which kind of wind. For instance, while not all of my cape holes actually do this, it logically seems to me that using them in predominantly downwind tee shots makes more sense than into the wind, simply because it makes it more tempting to take the sucker punch, as the basic idea intends. Into the wind, most golfers will just steer well clear. Second best is the wind blowing to the hazard, and the last best is wind blowing away from the hazard, forcing golfers to aim out over the water and hope the wind keeps blowing, which is too scary for most.
There can be some philosophical questions - does a reachable par 5 need a narrow pinched fw zone, or should it be wide to make a big drive required more attractive (and thus, more susceptible to the golfer taking the sucker punch) Each par 5 will get its own consideration in design, including comparing it to the other par 5 holes, and the tee shot immediately before and after (i.e., would we want two pinched LZ's in a row?)
[/size]How often would I use a pinched fw LZ on a long par 4?[size=78%][/size] [size=78%]Never? On a tournament course? Only on the closing holes? Only on a shorter par 4's where a layup that yields a decent length approach a real option?
In the end, I sort of like Fazio's quote - there are no rules, but most of us certainly develop preferences.
Anyone (golfers or archies) have their own preferred strategies they don't mind seeing course after course because they are inherently good?