I have recently been working at Tumble Creek. As with many places mentioned, the greens are divided into 3 sections where the hole is to be cut, with 16 greens (I think) divided into front, middle, and back. As the days went by, the holes were repeatedly cut in the same side of these thirds, or to mix it up, cut directly in the center. I could point out areas where the hole was never or rarely cut. And most of those areas would not be "unfair" or challenging; most of them, I believe, would have some really interesting hole locations. At the end of the summer, I started to become ticked off by this trend, but I wasn't going to tell my boss that A) this person is doing a bad job or B) let me do it.
From this experience and others listed, I believe that, yes, the art of positioning a hole has been lost.