I have to think that a well done update would be a great success. There is much more travel and interest in far flung courses than in the '70's. The patina of classic older courses is brighter now than ever. All the forces that made the original successful are still around and stronger than ever.
An update ought to do well.
One of the things people forget about the WAofG is that much of the commentary is a rejection of the monster courses built in the 60's and 70's before its original pub date. HWW, Price and others wrote pioneering pieces on the glories of older, Golden Age (they didn't use that term) courses. All that came as a surprise to me at the time. It had not occurred to me that there were ways other than sheer difficulty to assess a course.
WAofG was book that made me ask for the first time whether Butler National was really a better course than NGLA because it was more resistant to scoring.
And once you start down that road, of course, there's no turning back. You end up as a poster at golfclubatlas, for example.
Unless I miss my bet, I think the main contributors to WAofG thought they were doing something radical. They were, among other things, trying to recover an appreciatation for many older courses that had been forgetten by the golfing public by the '70's. I think that - and not its comprehensiveness - is the reason for its enduring popularity.
Bob