I play at a course that somewhat recently went through a restoration. I might be stating the obvious, but the intent of the restoration was to return the course to it's original design. The architect used his knowledge of the original architects, old pictures, course routings, etc. to create his "design". The changes were presented to the membership for a vote. As you can imagine there was very heated debate about the changes. Interestingly, the debate largely centered around how the changes were "clearly" to the benefit of low handicaps at the expense of high handicaps. Fortunately the vote was and up/down on the project as is and not one in which members could cherry pick certain changes. The restoration passed and aside from a few grumblings it has been mostly viewed as a success.
The entire process brought up a few questions:
1. Do architects take into account the appeal of a course to different skill levels during the design process aside from length, constraints by the owner and commercial pressures?
2. Does anyone have historical knowledge of how this was addressed/not addressed in the past?
3. Has this changed with changes with technology?