Patrick,
Again, a nice discussion topic. I recall commenting on the basics of spreading wear out last year in a similar topic. I don't have time to type all that out, but here is an excerpt from some other writing where I do:
The classical design idea of small greens for short approaches is impractical today. Green size is a function of spreading play around, requiring bigger greens on all holes.
That's because the 3-foot diameter around the pin setting gets worn, requiring daily cup movement to allow recovery. Full turf recovery takes three weeks, varying with agronomic problems like traffic, shade, humidity, and air movement. So, I actually plan for at least 24 cup locations, because we usually lose some cup areas somewhere between planning and playing.
Each course must develop a cup-setting scheme that rotates wear areas and provides balance of length, hole-location difficulty, and that doesn't unduly favor any shot pattern, say, by having five cups in a row set on the left side of a green.
I have seen superintendents divide greens into three (front-middle-back), four (a four square), five (four square with diamond), eight (sliced pizza pie) and nine (tic-tack-toe) sections for systematic rotation. (A seven-day rotation puts cups back in the same location for Saturday-morning regulars.) I design for six-cupping areas, using an abbreviated tic-tac-toe board:
LEFT BACK/RIGHT BACK
LEFT MIDDLE/RIGHT MIDDLE
LEFT FRONT/RIGHT FRONT
Each of the six areas boxes usually has four to six pin positions, or about 24 to 36 cup areas total. We add 12 feet around the green perimeter to keep the pin 10 feet from green edge, plus a few feet for a collar.
We encourage the superintendent to set three pins daily in each green area, generally following the numbered sequence above on each green to move the pin as far as possible from the previous day's location. Play variety comes from setting the back left pins on Holes 1, 7, and 13, Holes 2, 8 and 14 would be right middle, etc. However, they must customize their settings to balance a mix of easy, medium and hard pins daily. They can also maintain the scorecard yardage daily by using back pins when tee placements are forward, and vice versa, but many feel varying yardage is better for variety.
Minimum green size (based on width of eight 6-foot-wide pin diameters, and length of 13 6-foot-diameters) is about 48 feet by 78 feet, or about 3,000 square feet. This allows adequate cup rotation, but only if the entire green interior has slopes of less than 3 percent. In practice, most greens are bigger, with 6,500-square-foot average, and have many more interesting interior contours where they never set a cup.
Forty-eight feet is the narrowest practical green width to avoid concentrated foot traffic and excessive turf wear. I have also found that if the edge diameter is less than 48 feet, mowing damage occurs along the green edges, leading to fairly simple green shapes.
Like golf architects of the past, we design for a mix of play and aesthetic factors. While we can debate the merits of the first two endlessly, practical experience shows that if we don't design for heavy play by providing enough pin setting, we won’t get the level of maintenance golfers expect.
BTW, there are other things we can do to minimize wear on the greens, including:
Making the green WIDER on the cart path side, all other things being equal, to provide more walk up area
Design at least a foot of walk up width from the path for every thousand rounds, or ten feet for every thousand rounds in the busiest month (i.e. 50 foot wide for a 50,000 round course or 70 feet when 7000 rounds are played in the busiest month)
Make the walk up area for both the front of the green and from the cart path a constant slope to avoid "cow paths" in the most level area. Avoid green shapes that funnel traffic (i.e., generally a simple shape or outside curve that is parallel to the path allows traffic to spread over the whole width of the intended area.
Avoid bunkers or mounds between the path and green that funnel traffic.
The 24 cup settings above translates to 48 X 100' (with rounded corners, this is about 4400 sf) which is the smallest practical on a high play course. This assumes the entire green surface is useable for cup settings. Any tier or slope steeper than 3% means we have to add area - usually depth or width should be increased by six feet to create a fully useable pin spot.
Those who say greens can be too big are right, if we consider maintenance costs. Those tiers and unused pin areas must be maintained just the same, which is why so many courses have bland greens. For that matter, the steeper slopes are always harder to maintain and require special care, doubling the cost of those areas on a SF basis.
If those green dividers can shoot a ball away from the pin, a larger subdivided green may actually be harder than one with gentle rolls throughout. Economically, and strategically, a gently rolling green that can be cupped anywhere, but which presents generally harder putts the further you are from the hole because of moderate contours seem to work best as a compromise.
BTW, I think the bumpy greens at Pebble are a result of a mix of turf types rather than overwatering.