Getting back to Mark's original question, I do think the term, Alpinization sounds as if it was a "Tillie" term for it. Certainly the practice is remnants of the Geometric era here in America, and in Great Britain--before it, the movement of links inland. Were talking before Tillinghast even probably picked-up a club. The point being that movement, but creation of mass landforms a difficult task--not even really utilized at the time. (Late 1800's and before)
I think a lot of has to do with the industrialization of mankind--a worldwide happening. Instead of minor refinement of natural earthforms with a horse and scrapper, even man and a shovel, Taylor's efforts to recreate on land as such--more of an event that was about as obscure as building a four-sided triangle in the desert in which to bury people! Or so it was probably thought in the golf world circa 1910.
In America, were talking foreign language here, thus the Geometric era of golf design in America was born, especially here on the West Coast where many from the mid-west and east came for solace from the cold of winter. I certainly think that much of Tom MacWood's ideas of Art's & Crafts influence do in fact make sense. a style of architecture where East meets West in Pasadena, California. (The home of Greene & Greene) Certainly one only has to look at the early versions of Annandale and Virginia CC/Rec Park and see that alpinization or mound building had little to do with nature of the site itself--more the influence of such forms in the game from the old country. Some of those courses were built in the late 1800's (Bendelow in Redondo Beach; John Duncan Dunn commenting and suggesting at certain courses throughout the Southland) all the way into 1912, when Virginia CC expanded to 18 holes at the guide of Willie Watson. Many of those courses were completely changed in Golf's Golden Age of the 1920's, and rightfully so.
Many here, one person in paticular might want to discount the west coast involvement of Golf's growth in America, I never realized just how important of a factor it has in Golf Architecture itself. Golf grew at such a rabid pace. When I look at Seth Raynor and see such bold and straight lines, it makes sense. He was an engineer--engineers do that. All the more reason to respect his work when seeing how well it plays. But to attribute exactly who coined the practice, well that's one you could probably look directly to the school of Philadelphia for. Maybe it was Tillinghast observing for himself that it wasn't possible to make these forms work both economically and more, their scheme of how golf and nature work together, especially when realizing how important it was to build the golf course to the nature of the site, not the nature of the links and all its little quirks and gimmicks being artificially constructed when it was completely out of place. Thus the question answered of how golf and nature co-exist.