It depends on your view of what golf is all about.
To hear some good players tell it, you'd think golf is only about rewarding the guy who hits the longest and most accurate shots. If that were really all there was to it, you could play it all on Trackman now, and never have to go outdoors.
Most golfers accept that being outdoors and dealing with the vagaries of a golf course is part of the deal, and for many, that's the more appealing part of it. It's certainly the part that drives travel and tourism, and the part that people can fall in love with.
The question is how do you build a golf course that works for both groups?
The strategic school of designers has emphasized that you can't punish the average golfer's shot too much, because they aren't good enough to constantly be dealing with hazards. Instead, designers like Tom Simpson declared that hazards should be placed to punish the "almost great" shots of the best players, and that would be enough to defend the course for everyone else.
Pete Dye went a step further, and insisted the way to defend the course was partly psychological -- that you want to get inside the best players' heads, otherwise they will overpower any course you can build. The best way to do that is to tempt them, because what will frustrate them more than anything else is if they hit the ball well, but a tactical error means it's not good enough.
Average golfers, of course, are not immune to the same error, but the saving grace is that their susceptibility to it is NOT completely correlated to their ability as golfers. That's what gives the wily veteran his edge.