John,
I think it is fair to assume that public courses built for public play and not for championships may not survive the public....
In most the supt has almost total control of maintenance and will bring greens in when needing to tighten a budget.....same for fairways...change bunker shapes/flashing etc....
raise height of cut and frequency.....
all of this in the name of making a profit.....think about it how many more players can play if you get the round to under 4 hours vs. 4.5? I have seen it many times....they reach a medium unless they need them to sell real estate or they are subsidized by municipalities.....
AND most of the owners understand what they are doing....
THERE ARE SOME VERY GOOD EXCEPTIONS....