I will go on record as saying "no" to the post's question. Water hazards may bring about the lazy approach in some designs, but one needs to consider a few factors before they universally disclaim water hazards.
For one, today we often build courses on tough sites where water may actually be a requirement of the landscape. Tom D. points this out early in the post. Secondly, many today rely on earthmoving to form a golf course — the temptation is difficult to avoid, especially when people "like" water in the landscape.
Here is an excerpt of past writing on the subject, "Perceived versus Actual Difficulty," by Dr. Ed Sadalla who collaborated with me a few years back (Routing the Golf Course):
It is important to note that difficulty of a hazard and the excitement it generates do not always go hand in hand. Many of the difficulties in golf are mental, not physical — subjective, not objective. One can distinguish between the actual difficulty of a hazard and the perceived difficulty of the hazard. Hazards with high perceived difficulty catch the golfer’s attention, stimulate the imagination, and produce an emotional response.
Water is an example of a hazard with high perceived difficulty, even on holes where it is easily avoided. Water often compels fantasies of failure in the average golfer. Peter Dobrineiner, a British writer, put it succinctly: “Water creates a neurosis in golfers, the very thought of this harmless fluid robs them of their normal powers of thought, turns their legs to jelly and produces a palsy of the upper limbs.”
On many occasions, however, hazards with high actual difficulty have low perceived difficulty. For example, deep rough is a more difficult problem for most players than is a shallow sand trap. However, a green with prominent bunkers tends to attract more attention and elicits more apprehension than a green surrounded by rough. The former is more visually interesting, more exciting, and tends to be perceived as more hazardous, although the green surrounded by deep rough is likely to add relatively more strokes to the scorecard.
Generally, golfers are likely to notice and emotionally respond to any hazard that a human would have difficulty walking through. Water, sand, trees, shrubs, and desert all constitute a challenge to human movement and hence are visually engaging. Subtle difficulties, such as those that cause an uneven stance and those that cause a ball to roll off the fairway, may not catch the attention of the recreational golfer but surely add to the difficulty of the course.