I've always wondered, and have begun to think it's maybe true, that there is something of a classic "bell curve" appreciation to golf architecture:
-- The average hack simply looks at the basics -- uphill or downhill, dogleg right or left, bunkers/water/hazards I need to avoid -- and plays accordingly.
-- Then you have a range of golfers who recognize the design elements put in place by the architect, and play accordingly, taken into account things like: options how to play a hole w/ wide corridors, the use of the terrain in a classic Redan, utilizing bump-and-runs when conditions merit it, others.
-- Finally you have golfers playing at the very high end of the game -- pros, some scratch players -- who simply think all of these design elements are a lot of hooey that get in the way between the tee and hole, and represent essentially a bunch of visual fluff. I've read interviews w/ PGA pros who tend to think this way -- their ability to hit a target (be it a spot on a fairway, or a certain part of a green) is so good that all of the other stuff that everyone else thinks about, and looks at, is shunted aside.