Kyle - I'd guess I'm as good as anyone else; which means not very good.
But at least I see what you're getting at now. I just don't think many players - even pros - are precise enough hitting irons - particulary from 200 yards - such that the error we'd have in estimating that would effect our thinking at all. That is, all that's really necessary for aiming purposes is truly the general area in which the hole resides. If we know this - and a pin sheet would give us that - then again, what's the big difference if our eye is a few feet off? The natural dispersion of our shots will make that average out over time - that is, sometimes we gain from this, sometimes we lose.
You're still not selling me my friend. If I know where the hole is, the flagstick remains irrelevant.
TH
Frankly Tom, I'm not buying the relevance argument simply because the flagstick is SO hardwired into our brains that we take it for granted. Standardization of the height and the general feel of having a "thing" at which to aim are big parts of how we perceive the course and allow our brain to focus there.
Now, I'm changing how the information is dispersed. Now, our brain has to perceive the green differently and use what our eyes tells of the features on the green (and not the flagstick itself) as the reference point.
If I told you that a tree was 100 feet away, and asked you to pick out an object that was 5 feet left of the tree, I'll bet you could do it. You've had a life time of perceiving distances, things of different height at those distances, and relative distances from those objects.
Now, let's say that you are looking at something low to the ground, again 100 foot away, but you can only pick it up by a change in color (like a green) instead of a change in height - I would hypothesize that you would have much more difficulty determining five feet from that object.
You probably get the most practice doing this while driving.
Ever get behind the wheel of a new car with a bigger or smaller hood than the one which you are used to driving? Takes a bit to get used to, especially if you have to parallel park it.
What is happening is that our brains are used to perceiving certain standard things in three dimensions that we big to "flatten" out the standard parts of the picture. When one of those things is removed or changed, our brains suddenly need to compensate by taking in more information.
Since golf is as much about processing the information of the next shot as it is executing that shot - a different slant on the information or a change in that information, and how the golfer deals with that, is just as viable a test as execution.