Dating back to my first year in the biz, 1977, we remodeled a lot of greens around Chicago, and most of the old ones had some kind of tinkering with the sub soil. They added cinders, muck, all kinds of things. They must have known way back when that greens were special cases and perhaps needed something better than planting bent grass in native clay type soils around Chicago.
The 1968 USGA greens recommendation didn't come out of nowhere as a big surprise. They looked at all the stuff people had done, tested a lot of methods, and developed (and since modified often) their sand based green with a layer of gravel (apparently with coal heating going out of style, as well as diesels replacing steam on the railroads, cinders were getting harder to come by!)
Not only that, for centuries, grass guys recognized sand was the best growing medium you could have, but when the USGA codifies that, somehow they were idiots? That, and the fact that they thought granular fertilzers and irrigation had been "perfected" allowed them to focus on a sand based (which holds little water and nutrients) was best, to deal with the biggest factor hurting greens - soil compaction. And, as far as I can tell, those "best greens that are push ups" are probably at low play private clubs in relatively easy climates. I admit, there are also many public course greens still using native soils as a base, perhaps topdressed with pure sand up to the USGA recommended foot of sand over several decades.
In my own work, I try to localize my solutions for lowest cost, and easily obtainable materials for future topdressing, etc. I have cases where native sand drain 12-24" per hour they recommend, and adding peat only slows it down below minimums. Why not just use the native sand? And, for that matter, I don't know of too many sandy Florida courses that use USGA, they just shape the native sand, etc.
Short version, claiming the best greens are all push up greens, is a gross over simplification.