Cotton's quote is a good one Rich, if you just take the words at face value. Personally I wouldn't use it myself because I dislike many of his accompanying views on golf courses.
Like many professionals past and present, what flawed Cotton's perspective was his selfishness; naturally preferring courses and conditions that favoured himself. Narrow fairways flanked by high rough because HE was short and straight. Firm greens because HE could flight his irons softly, and not because they powered some greater mechanism the way they did for Mackenzie. Cotton's belief that difficult, penal golf was the "finer sieve" that would produce good players may have had some foundation, but it would have let a lot of handicap players fall by the wayside wherever it was adopted.
On the other hand, Mackenzie's ideal was that which afforded the greatest pleasure to the greatest number. Every aspect of his theory was bolted on to every other aspect, in an integrated way. Because he wasn't competing at the top level he wasn't affected by the same bias professionals can often exhibit—which itself is just human nature after all. If you like him, you can quote Mackenzie without too much fear something else he said will come back to bite you in the ass. I don't think you can do that with Cotton.
Personally I was always extraordinarily keen on all kinds of sports and games, but I could never achieve more than a mediocre success in any of them, and so it was quite natural that a member of a committee who, metaphorically speak-ing, could knock my head off at golf, would assume that his opinion on a debatable point was at any rate of an equal value to mine. On the other hand what he did not realize, and could hardly be expected to do so, was that I had given the subject years and years of intensive study and thought, whereas he had only given it a few minutes consideration during the time the matter was being debated. - Alister Mackenzie