Actually, I think very good players have affected both architecture and maintenance/evolution of courses to make them too hard for about 90 percent of golfers.
Meanwhile, the courses haven't gotten harder at all for them.
The difference, IMHO is in the kinds of things you infer. Forced carries, narrow fairways, tall seondart rough, lots of trees, large numbers of bunkers and ultra-fast greens are some examples that cause the typical amateur to lose balls and pile upstrokes, while the best players either don't "interface" with them, or actually prefer them (Fast greens, for instance).
Although it's rare, you could end up with is a course that's boring for good players and almost impossible for everyone else.
I'm the only person I know who has any interest at all in architecture, and players I know who are under about a 4 handicap almost all think good = hard. They say things like, "Rough is the only defense this course has."
So you end up with 25-yard fairways.
OTOH, it's a waste of time trying to get average players to move up a tee or two, even if there are only a couple of par fours they can reach in two shots.
K