Sean,
Why do you think that a large percentage of golfers would enjoy a "less challenging" course more than a difficult one? If people wanted to shoot a low number, most of the courses being built these days would be executive courses and not 7000+ championship courses. Humans like to challenge themselves, that's why people who run a 10K try for a half marathon, marathon runners try an Ironman, millionaires continue to go to work and take risks hoping to become a billionaire, and so on.
For, most golfers, a 6000 yard course is a challenge they fail to meet - if par is the measure. If bogey golf is the measure, a good percentage are right on target, a good percentage are still over-matched and good percentage are not challenged enough. I am not sure of your point.
Ciao
Yes, you are right on the mark, Sean.
Overall length of a course is only partially responsible of the how much challenge a course holds for an individual. I think that factor is highly overrated, because while it is true that a pro can hit the ball significantly further and more accurately than a typical bogey golfer, the length of the pro is NOT his only advantage, not even his primary advantage. It is the fact that he rarely misses shots, while a bogey golfer often does - thus the more shots that must be played on a given hole, the more opportunities for him to mess up.
Consider the following example. Let's say you play a hole with some horrible bastardized not-really-golf design of 150 yards that due to extreme narrowness, impossibly high trees and ridiculously sharp dogleg turns can only be played via 50 yard shots landing within a landing area 10 yards in diameter. If you miss the 10 yard diameter landing area you must play another shot into that landing area before you have the proper angle to negotiate the next 50 yard leg of the hole. Thus it is listed on the card as a par 5 from the 150 yard tees for everyone from Bubba Watson to his 90 year old great grandmother, because the ability to hit the ball further than 50 yards is meaningless.
Despite that, I believe Bubba Watson would greatly outplay the typical bogey golfer on this hole because he would almost exclusively make 4s and 5s, while the typical bogey golfer would probably average 6 point something just as his bogey golfer handicap would suggest. This is because he'd occasionally miss the landing area with one of his two layup pitches due to some type of mishit, or miss the green with his third, or hit it far enough away that he three putted, etc. It isn't the length of this hole that foils the poor golfer, it is his inability to consistently string three simple 50 yard shots in a row that does.
Obviously no golf hole is like this, but I provide the example to illustrate why I believe that absolute length is quite overrated as a reason why poor golfers struggle.
This brings me back to your point. A 6000 yard course is plenty of challenge for the bogey golfer, because his problem has little to do with the difference between having a short iron approach and a hybrid approach. His problem is the fact that whatever club he uses for his approach, there is an x% chance of him hitting a poor shot and putting himself in a bad place. The more shots he plays the more times that x% is multiplied together and the greater chance that he screws up some shot on the hole. That's why par 5s are the #1 handicap holes where you give/get strokes and you do so on par 3s before any par 4 or 5 only in rare circumstances with a particularly difficult par 3 and particularly easy par 4.
I generally play from the back tees, and like all golfers, occasionally I have a bad day. I'm not a bogey golfer, but at a 5.something index I'm certainly no scratch golfer, either. On such a bad day I might shoot bogey golf from those back tees (7250 yards or so on my home course) It might appear to an outside observer that I would struggle less if I moved up and played from the regular tees (6700 yards) or even the senior tees (6000 yards) but I think it would make little difference. The bad drives I hit into the trees would still be in the trees - there's not all that much benefit between having to lay up from behind trees 180 yards out or from 120 yards out. The irons I hit an inch or two behind the ball will still end up short of the green, whether I have a 6 iron in my hands or a SW in my hands. The putts I miss are missed regardless of what tees I started play from. Would I shoot a lower number if I played up on those days? Sure. Would I shave enough strokes off my total to make up for the lower course rating from the short tees? Not even close!