I definitely think the average American golfer would reject undulating fairways as "unfair." I think many have a mechanical approach to the game. This means that when standing on the tee, our goal is to "hit it between the rough lines" and we should be rewarded with a flat lie if we do. Many would deem it "unfair" to be "penalized" with an uneven stance and scream bloody murder if a ball was re-directed off the fairway.
Before I went to Ireland and before I became a GCA junkie, I must admit that I would have been in the group of whiners. Pat, you might have played Crystal Springs? While there is much to dislike about this course (mandatory to keep carts on path and mounds between path and fairway so you can't see your ball when you get there) I remember complaining about the "unfairness" of the fairway undulations... and swore I'd never play there again. Hmm, maybe I need to give it another shor?
Although there are probably several reasons, I have to think Bill is on the right track here. Perhaps if they weren't called FAIRways, golfers wouldn't expect a level lie as the reward for hitting the fairway. Rub of the Green is a somewhat foreign concept in the US. God forbid if a ball landing in the fairway hits a hump and is deflectd into the rough.
Several technical things were probably also at play here... the heavy clay soils make drainage paramount, little humps and bumps determental to drainaage patterns. Also, underground drainage tile was expensive and used mainly to bleed-off underground springs. Builders used equipment made for farming and road contruction and adapted it to golf course construction. I remember as a kid seeing a huge, flat square (about 20'x20') thing pulled by a tractor, with a maze of channels in it, It was called a Land-Leveler.
Finally, when any earthwork was needed, the loam topsoil had to be stripped/stockpiled and replaced after the underlying clay was graded. Replacing it with those old dozers was not as easy as with todays, which are finger-tip responsive and have blades that twist and turn at every angle - thus making it much easier to follow undulating landforms. And from a design standpoint, ;ong, smooth contours were the easiest way to do a earthwork take-off in the pre-computerized 3-D model estimating systems.
As I've stated in other posts, you can't divorce golf course architecture from that of the equipment on-hand at the time that was used to build it. It's easy to sit here in 2010 and wonder "why did those idiots design it that way". But, until you have tried to shape earth with an old, clunky, cable driven dozer, it's hard to understand. From the maintenance side, those equipment manufacturers designed equipment that functiioned best on what was already built. If an architect came home from across the pond and managed somehow to construct rumpled fairways, he would probably get skinned by the super that had to somehow maintain them. Imagine how much damage a old, heavy tractor - before the days of oversized "turf-tires" would do pulling a heavy gang of steel tire reel mowers when going through the wet low spots.
Form follows Function - only in this case it's not so much the function of play but rather the function of constructability and maintainability,
BILL M - you type faster
Bt as today's equipment is much better and smaller, I think you will be seeing much more.