A HUGE part of designing is experience and variety. Play many courses, see many courses, talk to many people, and try many new things. Just being aware of what else is out there even if you cannot play it, will help. That's where a good site like this comes in. (I really like playdg.com as well for getting a great feel about courses from photos, but the info there is limited)

I came across this site while the PDGA course directory was down. This site is really nice. They must have a group of dedicated discers who pull info off of various websites and consolidate it here. There are tons of pictures, loads of miscellaneous info on courses, great reviews, and lots of stats that you can track like scores, courses played, courses wishlisted, etc, etc, etc.

It's well worth a visit to check it out. I'd encourage you all to take a look.

http://www.dgcoursereview.com/course.php?id=2030

I will be using this next year for tracking the Winter Park league scores and statistics, so it would be nice if more players had a profile. We could build a huge database of statistics for all the courses with so many local leagues going on.