"Bobby Jones offers up the perfect reason for using stroke-savers."
Jim Kennedy:
I happen to look at Jones's quote the exact opposite. Jones played his golf and educated himself on the ramifications of architecture on the golf course and with his play. There is nothing to suggest Jones would have endorsed the "Stroke Saver" booklet idea. After all they did write in Jones day and they did publish booklets too---that's for sure.
"If the relief options for bunkers were the same as for other hazards or if bunkers were not treated as hazards then I think there would be less resistance to "Making them more architecturally difficult"."
That is an extraordinary thing to say and one I've been trying to do some research on from a rules perspective for some time now to try to determine exactly why things have evolved the way they have regarding the rules and relief from hazards, particularly why it became a rule of golf that a player could not ground his club in a hazard. A bunker, in the definitions on the rules is a hazard but relief from a bunker or an unplayable ball in a bunker certainly is different from the rest of what are defined as "hazards" in the Rules of Golf (eg "water hazards").
It is not allowable under the Rules of Golf to use Rule 28 (Unplayable) relief procedures if your ball is in a water hazard but it is allowable if your ball is in a "bunker" hazard. It also would probably change things quite a lot if the rules allowed a player to use some of the relief procedures with Rule 26-1 and 26-2 (Water Hazards) for balls with a bunker hazard!
Perhaps the Rules themselves and particularly how sand and bunker hazards have been treated within the rules are responsible for some of the gutting of the strategic effectiveness of that odd old vestige of original golf in the linksland---the bunker--or bunker hazard.
Once upon a time it was permitted to touch the ground or sand or anything else anywhere on a golf course. The over-riding rule or idea was simply a golfer should never improve his lie---and the determination of that was pretty much left to the conscience of the golfer. Somewhere along the line the rule came into golf that a player was not allowed "to make an impression" in a bunker hazard (probably in 1826) and then they decided to get rid of any doubt whatsoever by legislating that a player could not even "touch" the sand in a hazard with his golf club without penalty.
But you're right, some of the differences and distinctions in relief between a bunker hazard and a water hazard are odd (although somewhat understandable if one studies the evolution of these things) and, again, may've had something to do with why bunkers have been treated how they have been over time in architecture---basically making them much less effective as the hazards they once were or were intended to be to create effective strategies.