While there's been a lot of interesting discussion of whether angles matter in the other thread, it seems that the main participants have become a bit entrenched in their positions, 'Team Angles' and 'Team Data' if you will.
This leaves me in a tough position because I'm a data guy and think that there are some holes on which having a good angle on a second (or third) shot probably matters a lot for how you will score
from that point. But big data, which pool very different types of holes together, don't allow us to make those kinds of distinctions between holes.
Still, I'm almost certain that Team Data is right about one thing, which is the most important thing if you're concerned about scoring: if there's any kind of significant hazard on the good angle side, it's not worth it to challenge this hazard to get the better angle. Any benefit to be gained in strokes on the second shot will be more than offset by the loss on the first shot from hitting it in the hazard a few more times. This means that chasing angles on a standard type of 'good' hole design, where there's a significant hazard up one side (deep bunkers, pond, ob) and being near it gives you a less-impeded direct line at the green, is a fool's errand.
But what if we substantially reduced the risk in being on the good side of the fairway for the first shot? Would angles matter then? The data might be telling us that the problem with a lot of classical strategic design is that the risks and rewards aren't properly balanced--there's too much risk for the amount of reward and it's unlikely that you can ever create enough of an advantage in the angle for the second shot to offset more than a moderate amount of risk on the first. So maybe we shouldn't toss out the idea of designing holes so that the shape/contour of the green favor shots from one side of the fairway, but reduce the severity of the hazards on that side or even eliminate them altogether.
I have seen several holes that do this and I realize that they're among my favorites because I instinctively aim away from hazards and on these holes, I find myself
aiming for the correct side of the fairway. These holes benefit those who think backward from the green to the tee without requiring that they take on some shot for which the reward doesn't outweigh the risk.
Two examples are the 17th hole at Woking and the 8th hole at Pacific Dunes. The former really doesn't have any driving hazards at all but there are two bunkers guarding both the approach and the green on the right side. The green also slopes front-right to back-left, making it very tricky to land and hold the approach on the green from the right side. As we can see below, there isn't any trouble to driving up the left side and since you can gain a (maybe modest) benefit from driving it here, you should probably try.
It's a similar thing with the 8th hole at Pacific Dunes. Provided you can make a short carry over bunkers on the right, the fairway is wide open and neither side of the fairway looks too intimidating. But the green is sharply angled from front-left to back-right meaning that if you're up the right side, you'll have to carry a bunker and play into the narrowest aspect of the green, which runs away into junk long-left. So you'll gain a pretty good advantage just by playing out toward the trees on the left.
I accept the point of Lou Stagner, Erik Barzeski, and others that we shouldn't chase angles most of the time. But I'm not convinced that angles don't matter. I suspect that they do matter on holes like 17 at Woking and 8 at Pacific Dunes and suggest that designing holes like this can help make angles matter.