Of course, it varies from project to project, and over time. I recall, back when I had 2-4 staffers, that we all kept time cards. In 1989 or 1990 I recall a time budget sheet for one 18 hole course added up to 2300 hours from first design through my 30-60 days on site. After we got proficient in CAD, that dropped to about 500-600 hours in plans. As I mention when Mike Young complains about full plan sets, the truth is, if clients want them (and muni's usually do) once you set up the layers, views, and sheets, after doing the main plan, i.e., grading and drainage, you can almost hit a button and produce the rest.
I was more lax in counting up my on site time. Only when we were really busy did I have projects where the associate architects made most of the site visits. On about 10% of my courses, we did negotiate to get a full time person on site. Otherwise, it was 1-2 days per week mostly from me.
Like Tom, it always seemed to work well to bring the lead associate on as many site visits as I could. Like Tom, I found 2-4 day visits were more practical than one day visits. First, someone always seemed to want a construction meeting that took half a day at least. Or drag me into clubhouse design (or at least the area outside it, which isn't always our responsibility) Second, if the contractor had 2-4 shapers, it worked best if I reviewed and directed any changes, went a way for a few hours to let them work (conferring with shapers elsewhere) and come back to see it, tweak it, and approve it before leaving. On a one day visit, you can give instructions, but the shaping is really rarely finished so it takes another trip. We did use the ability to send photos back and forth in later years, sometimes using Photoshop to further illustrate what we meant to say....
When I was negotiating the second course at Giant's Ridge, I had the records that on the first one, I had 64 hotel nights at their lodge, which helped estimate the days on site (I figured about 1.25-1.5 days per hotel night, given travel schedules)
Tom's summary about how much time you need to leave for other biz aspects, not to mention life rings true. Young associates always wondered how I had the gall to charge over $100 for their time, when paying them $20 an hour or so to start in that era. By the time you figure vacation and sick days (15-20 days), benefits at 27-30%, weekly meetings and general office stuff, continuing education, and the fact that so many times with new associates, they had to redo stuff or were incredibly slow, the supposed 2080 hours available for working on real projects were really close to half that. Their $20 was really $27 after benefits, so break even was at least $54 just for them, and usually overhead cost about the same, and we charged at least $105, more if we actually thought we could squeeze a profit out of the owner, LOL. Sorry for being a bit OT.
As to Ally's comment on billing structures, we know the most profitable way to design is lump sum fee that accounts for time and profit. The least profitable way is to sign an hourly contract, although some agencies still required it (as of last year) But, no matter what the design fee billing structure, I think most gca's did keep time records. It would be interesting to hear a few more stories and anecdotes about the time it takes to design a golf course.
Like Ally, I sometimes wonder how everyone reveres the old guys and the fact that Ross actually spent two days on site! In modern times, the standards have gone up from one day of design on site and leaving the super to build it that most of them had to do by necessity (travel difficulties, etc.) to something similar to what Tom and I have noted.