Strategy has faded with time. I don't think the greens were crazy slow 50 years ago but they were less receptive mainly due to the ball and clubs and perhaps even the conditioning of the fairways.
The Modern Ball and Clubs have done the most damage to strategy. 50 years ago you had to learn a golf course and if you got wrong sided you had play away from the pin perhaps just happy to get on the green.
Its a different game now. For really good players there is very little strategy, they just hit THE NUMBER.
So true.
A couple comments on greens. They used to slope more, so the strategy was often to be under the hole. With more slope, sidehill putts were more challenging. Also, greens were not uniform... with some being firm, others softer, so golfers had to figure out how to attack each greensite.
As for the problems you pointed out, there are solutions... but would the governing bodies have the gonads to implement them? Not likely... unfortunately.
The solutions...
The book In
Search of the Perfect Golf Swing revealed that balls struck from the fairway had the same amount of spin whether they had grooves or not, but this differed from the rough. That research is from the 1960's, and grooves have obviously changed dramatically, but the research offers a simple solution...
Eliminate grooves, and put a limit of the abrasiveness of the face. Now you would put a premium on hitting fairways... as balls would come out of the rough like knuckle balls. I know this firsthand from playing ample hickory golf.
Next. Limit the number of clubs to 9 or 10. Now you'd find out who the shotmakers are. And... you'd eliminate the number of wedges these guys carry. The average golfer would benefit from a simplified set.
let all the technology remain... except...
...reduce the distance the ball flies.