Being blessed to play a lot of different courses, both old and new, I have noticed that many of the newer courses don't have the subtlety in the greens that the older courses do. The newer courses will often have large swales, but will not have the subtle borrows around the cup that many of the older courses that I play do.
I find putting on these newer courses easier, because long putts are easier to read & putts inside 10 foot tend to have a relatively obvious line. This often makes the chipping easier because there is generally an obvious landing zone for the chip.
Obviously, this is a generalisation that shouldn't cover all architects, but seems to cover many of them. Is it laziness or is it what the public demands ? I know that I often putt better on modern courses, yet prefer the challenge that many of the older courses bring.
My thoughts are that courses these days need to look hard but play easy. I often see people miss putts on a more subtle course & blame the course when it was actually the fault of their poor putting.
My belief is that if you divided up greens into 5 foot squares, you would find less borrow in the square the cup was in on modern courses.
Andrew