On large and expansive sites, freedom golf (undirected and multi-directional, with room for error and for chance, and option-filled) comes as a gift, as a grace unearned, i.e. the architect can enhance the freedom, but he doesn't need to create it, as it is inherent in and a product of the site itself, ready for unveiling by those with eyes to see and appreciate it and hands that are both willing and skilled. But on small sites, the opposite is true, i.e. this sense of freedom can be/must be manufactured, but it can only be done so with great human thought and effort, and even then the site itself can never truly feel as expansive. And so it seems to me that when golf first moved inland, in GB&I first of course, but then later in the U.S. with the early inland courses, it proved to be the death-knell (inadvertent/unconscious or not, I don't know) of freedom golf, i.e. the definition, the essence, the very value of freedom golf was lost/forgotten. And every since then gca, as practiced even by some of the most interesting and informed and enlightened architects past and present, has been a search in the dark, sort of dimly and vaguely, for a way to re-create/capture a semblance of that kind of golf, freedom golf -- a kind of golf/golf course that architects can imagine but can't quite describe/articulate, to themselves let alone anyone one else like a client. (And if were not for The Old Course, even that search itself would have ceased long ago). And so the best they can do, in place of freedom golf/golf courses, is to create strategic golf and strategic golf courses...the word chosen to mark a high point in gca (and opposed to penal), but one that also unwittingly marked the end of something grander and more expansive, i.e. freedom. What I think happened with the move to inland sites was that the field of play, to speak metaphorically, got narrower, i.e. the definitions and the defining characteristics of golf courses became the binary/two-sided "penal" and "strategic", when in fact both those terms/concepts/courses reside on the same end of the spectrum, with freedom golf residing way at the other end -- and expanse that was too broad to be easily encompassed/embraced, then or now.
That's my theory -- I hope folks can add to it or shoot it down or take it in a completely different direction. In other words, others will have to do the heavy lifting and answer questions, cause that paragraph is all I've got on the subject! (I called in a modest theory because it has to be just that -- I don't know the subject well at all and am just taking a stab at some ideas that had been floating around my head...)
Peter