Ken,
I don't understand what your post is supposed to mean with respect to mine. My point was that CBM felt if the dub couldn't reach in regulation, so be it. Who cares how many strokes they take as long as they do it in a timely fashion.
My point was that when you said CBM didn't care what club people hit into greens, you seemed to be overlooking the fact that 100 years ago even the dub could scoot a ball up onto a green from a LONG ways out.
As Alice Dye has so wisely pointed out, today's golfers in many cases are actually hitting it shorter than they did 50 years ago. If, like most female amateurs, you are challenged to get a shot in the air, then soft, closely-mown fairways are your mortal enemy.
CBM, perhaps more than his contemporaries, might well have been building courses for the crack player, but dubs weren't being asked to hit the kind of shots they are today.
IMHO, that's why so many of us find such joy in playing links courses. Several times a year, I tell people the story of my wife playing the par five seventh Royal Dornoch. She was about 225 yard out and hit a driver off the deck. It flew about 125-150 yards and ran up onto the green for a 25-foot eagle try.
She turned to me and said, "I LOVE a fast golf course."
There isn't a single hole I've played on an American-style course where that's possible.
And that is what I meant about CBM not designing courses where golf balls don't--or can't--roll up onto a green. When you have courses that do allow a ball to run, the club a player is hitting into a green makes much, much less difference. When my home course is as fast and firm as Ross would have probably intended, I can compete with guys who are 50 yards longer than me.
When it's soft, like it usually is, I need to move up about 400 yards to have a chance.
K