John,
I agree with everything said above by Tom and Jari. While there is probably a way for supers to maintain almost anything, the fact that many old courses do maintain push up greens, with great efforts sometimes that may be transparent to the average member, doesn't make the sand green any less effective as the preferred way to build or remodel new greens.
The basic theory of the original USGA specs was that greens need water, fertilzer, sun, air movement and relatively non compacted soils to do their best. When pelletized fertilizers became widespread, and irrigation was perfected, the need for soil in the growing medium to retain moisture and nutrients was greatly reduced. The thought was using sand reduced compaction and the other elements could be replaced easily.
As environmental concerns came into play, the idea of adding some soil back to greens mix resurfaced, especially since we found sand greens do compact, whereas theoretically, they shouldn't. Other research yielded much more knowledge about what really happens in greens, and the specs have changed over the years.
I recall from my days of working in Asia that the Austrailian supers generally didn't believe the USGA greens worked as well there as other methods they had developed. Whether it was a reaction to local maintenance methods, climate, or toilets flushing backwards, I never really knew, but it isn't hard for me to believe that one method, as good as it is generally, would work in every possible condition nationwide or worldwide......
And yet, in the US of A, it has more and more research has transformed it from a method to make good greens from readily available materials to a point for lawsuits when the mix drains 0.1" per hour less than USGA specs, or has 2% more or less fine particles than the spec says. The USGA revisions have broadened out the spec range to account for this, but as Tom says, it is still a concern to architects.
I am comfortable with California greens and other USGA mods, based, on as Jari says, careful analysis of local conditions. In many cases, the USGA wants 12-24" perc rates, and the readily available sands (for both construction and years of topdressing later) drain slower. So why add an organic when you like the existing drainage rates, which will slow down over time anyway, for instance?