I don't think it's fair to the straight hitters to have wide fairways and short rough. Tournament golf is about testing players to see whose game is the best that week; 50 yard wide fairways with short rough doesn't test a critical part of the game.
I reject that for the game to be "fair" short hitters have to have a good chance to play well. Is Harbour Town unfair because players all bunt the ball to the corners of tiny fairways surrounded by trees equally as "unfair" because it doesn't reward a different segment of golfers very much?
Different setups test different things. The ability to hit the ball far is a skill - speed is a skill in almost every sport (in fact it may be a defining characteristic that separates sports from games, in the opinions of some).
Now, while I fully agree that if you got to a point where you had five-yard wide fairways and unplayable rough on both sides, you'd be testing luck far more than skill, but on any reasonable range of setups, you're testing the abilities of the golfers within a pretty narrow range to "play golf."
The idea that we need to "help" short hitters is bogus and never really flies anyway, because the difference between long hitters and short hitters isn't going to do much. Phil Mickelson, I think, pointed this out at U.S. Opens, thought for years to be better for short hitters because of the penal rough, but Phil said something like "hey, at the U.S. Open, everyone's gonna miss fairways now and then, so I think the higher speed players have an advantage because when they miss, they're not only closer to the green but they're able to swing faster to get the ball out too."
In 2018 on the PGA Tour, the 10th most accurate driver hit 69.91% of his fairways while the tenth least accurate hit 53.58. Let's suppose the less accurate of those players is 25 yards longer than the accurate one… the accurate one hits 9.78 fairways per round out of 14, while the longer one hits 7.5. That's only two fairways per round where they're playing from further back, and I chose pretty extreme accuracy numbers… while on the other 11+ fairways per round they're 25 yards ahead and in the same condition (fairway or rough) as the short/accurate hitter.
So you can dislike courses that favor longer hitters, but it's still golf, and the ability to hit the ball far with accuracy is a golf skill. It's just one that you perhaps think is rewarded too often or something.
Guys now in PGA Tour events hit driver everywhere, partly because there isn't a penalty for missing fairways
That's not true:
https://thesandtrap.com/gallery/image/41-strokes-gained-table-5-2/From 180 yards out in the fairway, PGA Tour players average 3.08. You have to go all the way up to about 120 yards out in the rough to find their scoring is about the same. The rough presents a 60-70 yard disadvantage over being in the fairway.
It's just that the math like I showed above works out in their favor: the "inaccurate" guys are only missing 1-2 more fairways than the "accurate" guys, but on
every fairway they're 20+ yards closer to the hole (or whatever), and often have another club less in because they hit their 8I as far as the accurate (slow) guy hits his 7I.