Only for races like the Three Bridge Fiasco, where you can go either direction, or to broadly forecast in advance which direction to go first, and how close to go to geographic features in a race on the bay, where the exact course is not pre-known, but the start location, likely wind, and tide state and the likely courses are finite.

E.g. We start a race every month from "NAS-1" buoy off Alameda at about 12:30, and can count on the first leg being to the West, with wind building and tide changing. Tide can hit 2 kts, and strategic questions are whether to go North west on Port, or South West on Starboard initially and when to tack based on forecast current & wind, modified by tactical observations of real conditions and competition. In usual races, we get run back and forth crossing the tide a few times, and using the routing for a guide prompts thinking.