"Is there evidence that Macdonald, Raynor or Banks did? What about other golden oldies?"
Actually, Macdonald's take on the "distance problem" created by the onset of the Haskell ball compared to its precusor, the guttie, is pretty interesting.
Macdonald was apparently not much concerned about increased distance in the sense of making the game easier and he even convened his own "distance test" very early on at NGLA with a number of the day's best players taking part in the "distance test".
Macdonald seemed to conclude that any distance problem created by the Haskell was inconclusive.
But that's not the most interesting thing about Macdonald's position on rules and regs and controls on balls and equipment. He didn't exactly believe in it. He did not believe at all in the idea of "standardization" in golf's I&B.
But why? Apparently because Macdonald really was imbued with the old fashioned "spirit" of the game of golf, the thing he sometimes referred to as the '"Spirit" of the game of St Andrews.'
This "Spirit" he referred to included a number of things that would seemingly appear foreign to us today.
First, the "spirit" involved the playing rules of the game. The idea was golf was between gentleman (no matter their station in life) and it was in no way at all appropriate that a player take advantage of his opponent through some arbitrarily applied use of the actual playing Rules. The idea was to beat the best one's opponent could throw at you without the operation of some penalty not called by one's opponent on himself. So, even the calling of a penalty on a golfer was supposed to logically come from the player himself, against himself, and not necessarily from his opponent. Those things were what the origins of honesty, gentlemanliness and sportsmanship in the old game, we've heard about, was all about. The was the essence of what Macdonald referred to as the "spirit" (of the game of St Andrews). He even mentioned that some players didn't even know the actual Rules all that well, but they did understand that "spirit."
But how the "spirit" effected some thinking clubs and balls (I&B) and standardized control on them is even more interesting to consider today, and it's also where C.B. Macdonald was coming from which may seem contradictory today to "purity" in the game.
The idea with clubs and balls was that pretty much anything at all could be available to a golfer but it was up to him as a "sportsman" to basically adjust what he used down to some limit that would just sustain his skill.
In a sense, this was of no real difference than what a fisherman was supposed to do if he was a true sportsman. The idea was to adjust his implements down to the point where his rod and line (test) could just sustaind his contest against the fish.
And so Macdonald believed that it was OK to use whatever clubs one wished, even as many clubs as one wished and whatever ball one wished. He did not believe in the idea of "standardization" of clubs or balls. In his mind it was unnecessary to the concept of the "spirit" of the game and the concept of the gentleman "sportsman".