"Too short" and "too easy" were your criticisms ... they imply that you are so good that some architecture holds no challenge for you.
I fundamentally disagree with this. Calling a
course too short or too easy is a criticism of the course. The perception will, of course, inevitably be influenced by characteristics of the accuser's game. Nevertheless, he's criticizing the course and its architecture. This is different than if a player says "I'm too skilled for that course," in which case he's making a statement about his own playing ability. The distinction is subtle, but important, and here's why:
When a course offers a barrage of flat, short, wide holes with no penalty for hitting a ball poorly or offline, a player's failures are merely his own. A mediocre-to-poor player will still find a way to shoot over par, and possibly even fail to break 80/90/100. But he'll be doing so because he's chunking and shanking and pushing and pulling the ball, and not because he has gamely attempted to conquer shots just beyond his ability. On the other hand, his successes are given an asterisk by the course's lack of teeth.
There's no feeling in golf less satisfying than playing a round at Juniper Hills Municipal Course in my hometown of Frankfort, KY. If you shoot 5 strokes over your index, you feel like you're no longer qualified to play golf. If you beat your index by 5 strokes, you walk away feeling like you did when you were a kid and your dad let you score a point in a one-on-one basketball game out of pity. No matter what you shoot on that toothless, 6000 yard course, you walk away unsatisfied and hoping that no one asks. Whether you broke par or not has nothing to do with it. The course is just too easy for most serious golfers to consider it good architecture. That doesn't mean that no one should play it and that it can't be fun, as it can be just as enjoyable as any other poorly-designed golf course. But given the option of playing at Juniper Hills or playing anywhere else, I'll almost always choose "anywhere else."
That's obviously an extreme example, and I'm sure there are plenty of really enjoyable courses that also happen to be shorter and easier to score on. I've played quite a few of them myself. But <6000 yard courses with great architecture are tougher to find because, on balance, they simply don't have as much space to offer variety and are often missing the features that make for interesting, challenging shots. Not every <6000 yard course is too short or too easy, but certainly some of them are and it's a fair criticism to assign to a course with little architectural challenge.