Let’s face it, there are a myriad of factors that determine and/or differentiate what is or isn’t great golf course design. Mess up on any one of these factors and your course will be subject to a lot of scrutiny.
I know this thread is about bunker placement. I tried (sorry Mike) to expand it to “hazard” placement in general. But now the word “hazard” no longer even exists in the rules of golf. Frankly we have come full circle as the word hazard never existed in the original rules of golf either. Bunkers were not called “hazards” nor were ditches, or mounds or hollows or ponds or …. They were all just “hazardous situations” a golfer could get themselves into and it was up to them to determine how they would get themselves out. If your ball ended up in a ditch or a large sand pit, you dealt with it. If you ended up with a large mound between your ball and the hole, you figured it out the best you could. You were in a hazardous situation and you just had to deal with it.
But it was these hazardous situations that made the game exciting. Despite what Thomas said about Mackenzie finding a flat and boggy site at The Jockey Club and having to sort it out, I can guarantee you that while he was definitely concerned about drainage, he was far more concerned about building something interesting and challenging otherwise it likely wouldn’t remain a golf course for long no matter how good the drainage
Early golfers/architects didn’t seek out flat featureless land to play their game. They went to the links with all their dunes and blowouts and gorse and rumpled ground that made the game interesting and fun. Early course design was as much an obstacle course as it was anything else. And the location of those obstacles (mostly in and near the line of play) was what made the game exciting. Future architects embraced this thought/course layout process and continued it to this day.