I think we have to remember that all the restoration talk really applied to a few hundred golden age courses. I doubt many care to restore a 1950's Floyd Farley course, or even a 1980's Jeff Brauer course. Many of those were built on shoe string budgets, and were limited in design because it was all they could afford. And, many kept having features (i.e., bunkers, trees) added as someone thought they were necessary.
Even most master plans these days focus as much on replacing 25 year old infrastructure as it does design, and then its a bit easier to convince someone that as long as you are replacing greens mix, tile, etc., that it doesn't cost a whole lot more to do the entire complex. I never get a question like, "How have you carried forward design principles from the Old Course in your current work?" It's more like, "How big should our tees be?"
Golfers don't often understand architecture, but they know what they like, sort of like art. Hard to know, but that suggests its overall ambiance and aesthetics, over any particular design feature, other than unfair ones, like creeks they can't clear, doglegs they can't get to, etc.
To answer Tommy's revised question, back when I had a club (now under some warehouses) and actually remodelled it, it was mostly good players driving the discussion and that was directed more at tougher than more interesting, sort of like they were still reading their 1970's rankings from Golf Digest, and hadn't bothered to catch up to current flavor of the decade thinking.
