I see a lot of that narrowing, and figure its all time savings and cost savings, although some greens committee guy may have figured that sans bunkers, the approach was too easy and there needed to be some penalty for not going right at the center of the green!
As far as cutting off the fw and starting it again, there were calls for putting fw only in the LZ, and this might have something to do with it. Theory is it saves maintenance. Those photos look like its swales and valleys that don't have fw, so it might be a case of not having the right drainage to mow densely cut fw in that area. Even if they added drainage, it might be difficult.