I'll go with Joe's; "Narrow fairways usually[/] indicate poor green complexes and in general, a weak overall design, otherwise why have them?"
.... A narrow fairway doesn't seem to require the architect to put more thought and talent into the shaping of his product.
How do either of those even remotely make logical sense to anyone?
Besides that, an architect can create nearly the exact same approach shot dilemma with a 35 yard wide fairway as a 50 yard wide fairway by covering the same amount of green proportionally (i.e. 1/3 or so) and by changing the angle of the green from say 25 degrees off the line of play down to 15 degrees (just example numbers, but you get the point) And, he gets some differentiation between fairway and rough to at least discourage the bomb it crowd.
There are times when I think doing a piece on "width" here is like Fox News doing a piece on "Obamacare." Put out nearly anything about it is like throwing chum in the water and watching the fish go crazy about it.
I would tend to think designing a green that offers approach-shot interest when played from a 35-yard-wide fairway would be
harder than providing the same interest with 50-yard-wide fairways. Imagine the limiting cases.
Make a fairway just a couple of yards wide, one swipe of the mower. The design of the green can not really favor an approach shot from one yard left vs. one yard right of center, can it?
Now imagine a course with no rough at all. Almost any sort of contours and bunkering you can imagine will play differently from 50 yards left versus 50 yards right of the centerline, no?
I believe for any realistic fairway width a good architect can design in some interest for the approach shot. Either angles or shot shapes (or both). Wider fairway if anything make that part of the job simpler while narrower fairways constrain the green complex design.
Or maybe I'm totally wrong. What would I know about designing golf courses? All I can go on is having played for a number of years on a course with interesting but fairly benign green complexes and nowadays playing at a course where the greens are "interesting" in the sense of the old curse "May you live in interesting times".
At my former club, even as a bogey golfer I could tell that some greens were better or more safely approached from one side than the other on a 40+ yard wide fairway. At my current club, there are places where being even 10 yards left of center vs. 10 yards right or center means having to play away the hole location in order to keep an approach shot on the green.
In my opinion, it's nothing to do with demands on the architect regarding green design. It's about execution. Make a fairway 40-50 yards wide and even a ball-spraying hack like me will be favoring one side or the other if it will make the approach shot easier/safer. Make a fairway 30 yards wide (or less) and I'm just trying my darndest to find some short grass. Angles will be luck of the draw.