Suppose that Tom Doak designs a wonderful golf course that is 6800 yds from the tips. (There are rumors to the effect that he has actually done this!)
Meanwhile, suppose that another GCA designs an absolute turkey of a track, also at 6800 yds. (This, regrettably, has also been rumored to have happened.
Am I to believe that anyone seriously believes that Tom's otherwise brilliant design would be compromised if two additional sets of tees were places in between the tips and the very front? Really?
Meanwhile, does anyone think that I believe that the turkey would somehow be saved if two tee boxes were removed so that it had the Perfect Number Of Tees In The Spirit Of The Game? Because if you believe that I believe that, then I've failed worse that I could have imagined.
The bunkers at my home course are awful. They're awful from 7223, from 6781, from 5909, from 5541, and from 4902. (And for the record, they are also awful from the two sets of hybrid tees on the scorecard.) There is a way to save those bunkers, but it doesn't involve tees; it involves dynamite.
Pinehurst hired Hanse to restore #4 not by figuring out which of the 5 sets of tees to take out; Pinehurst hired him largely to take out ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY BUNKERS put in 18 years ago by the same guy that built the unfortunate bunkers at my course just two years before. Suppose instead that Hanse had left all 140 bunkers (that's almost ten per hole, if you're keeping score at home...) that Donald Ross did NOT build, and instead had simply taken out two sets of tees on each hole. Would that have somehow been a comparable "restoration"? Would golfers have benefitted from that change somehow? That's an absurd example, of course, but you get the idea.
The number of tees and the quality of the design have no real relationship; none at all. Great design isn't either helped or hurt by the number of tees, and bad design can't be saved by the number of tees, either. It's just about options; binary. You either like that, or you don't, but don't muddy the water by talking about other stuff like the handicap system, the spirit of the game, the way some group that you know of plays the game, or some made up fantasy game where golfers just throw the ball down and hit from wherever they feel like hitting, or whatever. None of that actually matters to this question. It's just options, nothing more. If you don't like options, just say so.