I recall a quote/saying along the lines of "Hard hole, easy green. Easy hole, hard green". Not sure of the source of the quote/saying but thought I'd throw it into the mix.
Atb
Thomas, that is sort of what I was hinting at. There needs to be some difficulty balance.
If you pull off a hard tee shot only to get a hard approach, or have two hard shots and still face a hard putt, there is really no risk/reward.
Couple of other thoughts.
On Archie's comment about pinched bunkering at 300.....I think he is on the wrong thread.....but in reality, offering a much safer layback doesn't work at well on 370 yard holes. The key to the temptation to do so is 25-30 yards further away AND going up 3 clubs. It works even better if the layup approach goes from under 150 to over 180 yards, where it starts to get exponentially different. Going from a half wedge to 8 iron makes it close to no-brainer land to layup, and the pinch works better on medium length par 4's.
My mentors at one time experimented with a simple system, which I always found it hard to get the numbers exact, so it is a rare deal when I pull this old chestnut out, but it can validate or double check the general principle. They assigned a value of 0-3 on tee, approach and first putts and figured the total of all shots should equal par. If it equaled 5 or 6, and a 2-2-2 that might be okay on a shorter hole, because longer holes were harder by definition to them. But they wouldn't think to do a hole ranked 3-3-3.
They would strive to design holes that were 3-1-0, 3-0-1, 2-2-0, 2-1-1, or 1-1-2, 1-2-1, 1-3-0, 1-0-3 or even rarely put all or most of the emphasis on one shot or putting, like 0-0-4 0-4-0, 0-1-3, 0-2-2, 0-3-1, etc.
Again, goofy, but I do agree that most holes should not be all that hard to be fun.