Perhaps apropos, or perhaps not at all (or only seeming so to me) - a selection from "Echos from British Links"- American Golfer (1920)"
"It is a question" says Mr. A. C. Croome in the Morning Post, "whether magnificence is a virtue or a fault in golf courses. Among the many services which Mr. Harry Colt rendered to the Sunningdale Club must be reckoned the modification of several holes by reduction of their more gigantic features. For example, the putting greens of the first, sixth, eleventh, twelfth, and fifteenth holes are about half the size of those originally constructed, and the play of them has consequently gained much in interest. At Woodcote Park the few and trifling alterations made have also been in the nature of reduction.
And if we turn to the places obviously intended by a beneficent providence for the playing of golf we shall observe that they are mean rather than magnificent.
There is nothing spectacular about the Road Hole at St. Andrews, and its governing bunker is commonly described as "that dirty little sink at the foot of the green." The best shot hole in the world I believe to be the sixteenth at Westward Ho! But a stranger might walk over Northam Burrows without even discovering its existence. At Hoylake the Dowie beats the Alps to a frazzle. The architect of Coombe Hill will tell you that the really good bit of work which he did there was the shaping of the puny bank leading to the seventh green. The casual visitor may possibly carry no recollection of it away with him, because subtlety is elusive.
Returning to Westward Ho!, as we must if it is desired to illustrate a discussion by citation of the best examples, we shall find that of all the longer boles the second is that which causes the greatest uplifting of spirit in the player who has taken it in a faultless four; the fourth, with its spectacular carry from the tee, makes him most inclined to kick himself when he takes five to it.