Brian,
I'm glad you enjoyed most of your round at Waynesborough. It's a nice club that get used a lot by members and their family. As Joe alluded to, I managed the 18-hole bunker renovation there for Tom Marzolf and the contractor Mottin Golf (as well as the US Open work at Merion that seemed to please you).
As to your question of WHY the 14th green was renovated, I think a lot of it has to do with the severity and lack of usable pin locations on the pervious version (which was rebuilt ten or so years prior to the latest iteration). But I think more of it has to do with it just being "that" green at so many clubs. You know, the one that everyone moans about at the grill after the round as being "unfair" or the one that ruined their round.
Some of the things I do like about the new hole:
1) The more aggressive and confident play over the lake is rewarded with a backstop at the right rear portion of the green
2) The bunkerless hole adds variety to a course with at least one greenside bunker on every hole
and
3) The chipping area left balances out the chipping area right on the par 3 6th hole.
The chipping area on the 14th is very moundy and "shaped" looking. I would agree that it is far from the best hole on the much stronger back nine (which is odd considering how much flatter the back is than the front - only holes 10, 11, and 18 have any significant elevation change, and it comes all at once on large hillsides). But it is far from a round killer in my mind.
It's no surprise that as a better player you found the fairway bunkering challenging. We built a bunch of them, much more than the current Fazio bunker project I'm working on, and all of them have the better player's carry distances in mind. In fact, while building the bunkers I found that I was in the line of fire far more often on player's second shots than their drives.