"In sum -- can individuals ever divorce their own personal success / failure with any final course assessments?"
In my opinion, some either can't or just don't want to but certainly others sure can. I think the far greater problem is how fixated golf architects have been and continue to be about the reaction to architecture and courses of really good players.
Me, I'd have to be a 1 or a 2 at most. And if you don't believe me you should see what I just did last week and some of the emails I've been writing today in that regard on The Creek Club.
But I do draw the line on this kind of thing in some ways. One would be that some call a course like Pine Valley not ideal seemingly implying and inferring its architecture is lacking in some way. Since that particular course and its incredible architecture was never intended to accommodate much more than good golfers I don't see that as an issue at all.
I think if one is truly going to analyze any golf course or its particular architecture one should learn how to apply "The Big World" theory to it first.
It's pretty damn hard to nigh-on impossible for one single golf course to ideally accommodate the games of all golfers across the spectrum of playing levels and abilities.
That may be an interesting and perhaps noble goal but it really is a near impossibility, in my opinion.
But if one ever truly does do that in spades, it probably SHOULD go to the top of the list and be ranked the greatest course in the world!
But the truth is for any architect to ever do anything like that he'd have to have both immense imagination first and he'd probably need to get all kinds of lucky with a site or God-only-knows what else too.