So given that's your philosophy, what do you do to preserve the challenge for better players given the limited length?
Obviously one way is to make the driving very challenging so that you fear the consequences of an inaccurate drive and leave your driver in the bag, but that's hard to do without just being penal, and it makes things hard for the higher handicappers no matter what tees they play from. Especially since most of them automatically reach for their driver on every par 4 or 5 unless its really obvious there is something they need to stay short of like water or a ravine.
If the holes were relatively wide open so that driver could be used rather freely, that will leave a lot of par 4s with a wedge approach even at 7200 yards, or leave no truly long par 4s and just a bunch that are short iron approaches. Do you just concede that the good players will eat it up and not care since you are designing for the masses and not the scratch golfers? Or do you handle it with small greens and heavy contours to require them to get really close if they want a good look at birdie, plus very firm surfaces so that even wedges won't easily stop? The defense at the green end is time tested and known to work well, so long as any one defense doesn't get out of hand and cause slow play due to the amount of short game shots and putts being played amongst all classes of golfer.
I'm not arguing for 7800 yard courses, and like the idea in principle of trying to design courses so that length is a rarely used method of increasing difficulty rather than the primary method. But while I've seen some really good examples of short but challenging courses I've unfortunately seen more bad examples of how not to do it!
So I'd hate to see this principle accepted by all architects without them also accepting some good ideas behind it beyond limiting total distance because I can't wait to see how my linear miles of lateral hazards 10 yards off the fairway some courses would be given to make them sufficiently "challenging" in the mind of an unimaginative architect who just adds 50 yards here and there when he wants to crank up the difficulty.
Sure, a long par 4 that makes you hit a 4 iron at the green is always going to be challenging because 4 irons aren't really scoring clubs and it doesn't take much error on the drive before that 4 iron shot becomes an even longer shot out of the rough where the green is not even in reach any longer. But a hole where you have a wedge in your hands and still don't feel confident you can find the green, or feel confident you can find it but worry you might leave yourself in a place where two putts aren't guaranteed, let alone a decent look at birdie, and it can provide everyone not named Tiger all the challenge they can handle. And the 95 shooters who aren't hitting more than a handful of greens in regulation anyway aren't going to be bothered by missing the small greens or only getting a handful of one putt greens, that's the norm for them anyway.