Ian,
The hard part about this discussion is how quickly it goes to tour players, when they should have zilch effect on what the average course does. IMHO, the USGA and PGA Tour can do what they need to do to make bunkers relevant for their players, and we can do what we need to do elsewhere. Its really two different games, no?
Bunkers still matter for the 99% of average players. Even if more than that can get out of them in one, which is probably both their and the course managers goal, they don't save par more than maybe 10% of the time. The trend towards raking and smoothing has been ongoing since I have been playing golf, starting in 1967. Raking was the first etiquette lesson I was taught. How much penalty do we need for every day golf in America?
To me, the "too far" is the insistence on perfect maintenance every day, which I expect the economy has toned down. I had two clients in Kansas at one time. The private club spent $600K on raking and trimming bunkers every day to present the best possible course to guests and members. The public course spent about 1/10th of that, but had more rugged edges and only raked four days a week, not seven. They took a chance on Monday, Wednesday and Friday players seeing less than perfect conditions, but the number of balls in an unraked lie was still really quite small. It was all appearances.