I'm sort of ambivalent about water hazards on golf courses.
On the one hand, they certainly do preserve the idea of sudden and immediate penalty in golf in the currency of golf--eg strokes to pay.
The fact that a water hazard immediately takes your ball out of play by instantly losing it for you should actually speed up play compared to the potential lost ball elsewhere that can and does allow a five minute search period which is too often followed by either a violating of the rules via the neglecting of the stroke and distance penalty or takes more time to go back and play stroke and distance (when too many golfers neglect to play a provisional ball).
On the other hand, water is sort of primal with human beings. I guess Freud was right when he said he felt water (or particularly running water) was sexy to human beings, or did he say sexual? However, I can't recall ever being remotely sexually aroused by a water hazard on a golf course in the same way I suppose I was sexually aroused by watching Marilyn Monroe actually drool in one of her kiss scenes.
If water did not provide, and therefore preserve, this type of instant penalty in strokes in golf, God only knows how much more Man would've tried to completely sanitize the whole idea of natural penalty from golf itself---eg look what golf has done to the functional penalty of the sand in sand bunkers.
And I'm also sort of ambivalent towards this mentality, or even constant obsession, with speed of play---eg the race against the clock to finish a round. I'm more into the idea of going out and playing golf and spending the time enjoying one's self rather than attempting some breathless race against a clock around a golf course.
If as many golfers are truly as interested in a race against a clock as they seem to be, my suggestion would be that they play golf in the old fashioned way---eg if your ball be lose FOR WHATEVER REASON the hole must be given up in match play.
Obviously RELIEF in regard to a LOST ball was instituted more for stroke play because if your ball becomes lost in stroke play you can't exactly go onto the next hole as you can in match play. All you could do in that context in stroke play would be to just go home.
Hey, that's not a bad idea at all if you speed-of-play clock-lovers are really as fixated on preventing slow play as you seem to be. Let's just say a golfer in stroke play lost his ball, for whatever reason, on the second hole of his round. He would have to go home at that point. He and the speed of play fixators could then honestly say he only took perhaps 27 minutes to play golf that day.
"Honey, why are you home so early, I thought you were playing in a stroke play tournament today?"
Would you please shut up, woman---I lost my f...ing golf ball on the second hole and they made me leave."