I think our perceptions of time and of memory probably have something to do with the way we view this discussion.
Memories are pretty diverse in the way we experience them, right?
Some of our vivid memories are of specific moments driven by the physical sensations we felt in those moments, relative to how our brains were processing and snap-analyzing those sensations. An example might be the memory of a physical fight you got into as a kid.
Other memories are broader because they're of general experiences and the feelings they produced. An example might be the memory of a great dinner you had with a bunch of old friends. You're not likely remembering the actual content of the discussions, but you're remembering the general blissful atmosphere. Now, that in the moment you were experiencing that bliss, you were reacting to/remembering things that were said. So in reflection, it's really a memory of a memory.
I think the same dichotomy applies to this discussion.
When I reflect on the experience of playing a specific, outstanding hole, I'm usually drawing on, variously:
- the experience of deliberating about what club to hit or what line to take off the tee;
- the shapes the various elements of the hole suggested;
- the feeling I had seeing the ball in the air;
- the anticipation of what it might do on the ground;
- the reaction to what it actually did on the ground;
etc.
Whatever those specific feelings I'm accessing may be, they all had in common the temporal condition of taking place inside the sustained action of playing the round (even if those feelings took place on the first tee or 18th green). So they're visceral sensations/memories, because they're experienced in response to the specific action of preparing to play or playing a specific shot. If I'm going to remember them years later, they're going to have to be very significant.
But If I'm reflecting on the more general experience of playing a given course, I'm usually drawing on the feeling I had when the round was over, which is a time when I was necessarily not in the process of preparing to play or playing a specific shot. But, it is a time when all those (and more) sensations bulleted above were much easier to access in my short-term memory. It's harder to remember those sensations the farther in time I get from them, so the general experience of the course becomes the dominant memory-base. It's also easier to hold onto that memory because what you're remembering is not so specific.
In effect, the memory of playing a golf course is a memory of a whole basket of memories, while the memory of playing a hole is a direct memory. The once-removed nature of the memory of the course, I think, means that it's harder to use it as a basis to quantify/rank/judge definitively, and therefore easier to debate.