Mike,
Respectfully, I find flaws in that manner of thinking:
1. Golfing and even non-Golfing followers of the game, not just the ones crazy enough to be on this board, derive something from major tournaments returning to long-visited sites. The history of elite championship play is nearly as much the history of the sites where the deeds were performed as it is about the deeds themselves. Every sport is like this...Wembley, Lord's Cricket Ground, Yankee Stdium, Fenway Park, Lambeau Field, the LA Coliseum, the Rose Bowl, the Boston Garden. Even something smaller and under the radar..like the old Tiger (Briggs) Stadium in Detroit, which I remember not only being quite cool when I saw it, but immediately my eyes went up to the massive light towers on top of the right field roof...where Reggie Jackson hit a titanic homerun in 1971 for the AL as a member of the A's. In the same way, I appreciate when you see the Ouimet plaque on 17 in Brookline and Sarzen's at 15 ANGC...this is one of the essence of observing and loving the game...not to mention to keep the architecture in the golf world's eye. Almost every time around is played on WFW and a guest comes to the Par 3 third, invariably someone in the know will relate the story of Casper's lay-up in all four rounds en route to his 59 Open win. And while we're only 5 years out, won't Mickelson and WF be one of the most celebrated heavyweight fights between a course and a golfer ever recorded.
2. I don't think Winged Foot W has been destroyed or compromised by having 8 significant championships contested over it's 90 years. At the same time, I acknowledge that it has nothing left to prove as a test of US Open or PGA conditions. And as I said in an earlier post, if lengthening is the derided alteration, it's not relevant to me because no one plays there except for seven days every 15-20 years. therough goes away and farther out, the green speeds modify.
3. I don't deny that the membership derives enormous benefits of prestige and resultant economy because of its hosting, but they've been pretty good stewards of the course for near on a century and the thing plays and looks better now than in 1984 or 1997, so I think it's a fair exchange. To my mind, the conditions for all WF golfers and the preservation of the essential Tillinghast design are at a zenith in the wake of the last 10 years, since the Elm disease and resultant tree program, and of course the Open.
I'm sorry if I missed the point of what you and/or the wise man was trying to say.
cheers
vk