RJ,
Very true. We try to limit drainage off the front to half or third the green, and have seen greens that all drain off the front, or have adjacent mounds that add to drainage off the front drain slowly. One way to mitigate that is to adjust any part to part sprinklers to something other than 90 degrees so the stopping points where it waters a bit more before returning doesn't all stop at the approach. While I like my greens to set pretty low to the ground in many cases, I have set my minimum slope at 3-5% (5 being the max if it happens to be the required wheelchair route) rather than 2% or so.
Of course, for this site, I was thinking about more design aspects, such as a comment I once heard about Dye courses- "The approaches look Scottish with all the bumps and hollows, but in reality, all it does is reinforce the desire to play the aerial game because they are so unpredictable.
On the Dye positive side, for variety, I occasionally use a steep bank grass bunker, an ode to his 10th (?) green at the Golf Club where I thought it looked cool. I also pull out the old "catwalk" approach I first saw at 17 Seminole years ago. But, most greens, IMHO, probably need a near green width approach to accommodate average players, maybe concave to help direct shots, or slope left if coming in on the right side of the green, and right when left, etc.