JES and JK,
In essence, placing fw bunkers for the good player only was the single item that made Augusta the preeminent course in the course and influence in the country, replacing Oakmont when it opened, no?
Whereas Oakmont penalized every bad shot with a bunker, Jones and Mac figured out that if someone was hitting it about 140 yards and couldn't hit the green anyway, why punish him? He will make bogey and why does he need to make a double or more?
For that matter, they tried to encourage certain lines of play as much or more than punish others for the better players. Even the Ross "top shot" or other carry bunkers at about 120 yards went out of style, and that set the pattern for design for the next 70 years or so, basically continuing to today, with some exceptions.
I have heard older players say they pay their dues/greens fees, too and they deserve to hit into bunkers as well. But, they can hit into greenside bunkers on nearly every hole, and we usually leave them a few bunkers that serve as optional carry bunkers for better players and lateral bunkers for shorter ones.
Its not really all or nothing, its a matter of degrees - I would only want a few shorter distance fw bunkers on my courses, just as some gca's favor more greenside bunkers left than right (perhaps at a 2 to 1 ratio) on the theory that those come into play more often for good players and less often for poor slicers, so they are "perfectly located" in all respects.
BTW, as JK notes, rough is usually present every where down a fw, whereas a fw bunker takes up just 2000 sf typically. The chances of hitting rough on a wayward shot is 100% for all players under the typical set up. The chances of hitting the fw bunker, even if placed very logically to play, are still remote.
Everyone hits a slightly different distance, AND we all hit it different distances on every individual hole, so we place fw bunkers at slightly varying distances, rather than always at 290, etc. (Of course, this is influenced by landforms, wind, elevation, etc.) While probable chance would even out the number of times any one player would hit a bunker, it is possible that even a good player hits it longer where the gca put a shorter bunker, and shorter when the gca places a longer bunker, etc. Or, the other way around on a bad day!