"The feature is the smallish knob jutting into the front of the 5th green at Friar’s Head Golf Club."
When I read this I thought of the small knob to the right of the green at Pacific Dunes no. 10. Have you seen it?
I wonder why designers do not build more rumpled fairways and I can think of many reasons. It could be hard to mow. It could be that people like to drive their cart on flat areas. It could be that people expect a flat lie in the fairway. It could be that drives end up in certain spots and then lots of divots.
Scott:
The knob you mentioned [actually left front of the 10th green at Pacific Dunes] was there all along. Actually, it was bigger to begin with, but the green and approach had to be raised up three or four feet with sand, as the valley was mostly sandstone on the surface. So the mound kept getting smaller ... we might have put more on top to preserve some of it in the end, I can't remember for sure, but the idea of it being there was entirely a natural occurrence.
Though possible, it is MUCH harder to add such random features into a site and have them appear natural. It's much easier to do so if the site already possesses a lot of those sorts of features ... but in that case, you can just use the ones that are already there.
It seems that the the best features were already there and then you make it playable.
Would you think of putting a knob by a green or would that just be trying to copy something in nature?