Sven, great find. By and large, I think Emmet is right on.
The funny thing is that he doesn't really allude to a "proportional challenge." Weak players, he contends, aren't looking for a course where they can make a ton of pars and shoot scores equal to the strong players. Instead, they want to play the same tough courses that the good players enjoy and improve by tackling the challenge. This is consistent with the huge majority of players that I have played with. Whether it's because they want to improve or because they just find a testing course more enjoyable, most players seem to prefer a generally difficult course over a generally easy one, at least up to a certain point.
However, he also draws an important distinction. While anyone can learn to hit the ball straight and solid, not everyone can learn to hit it long. Thus, even at a men's only club in 1902 he advocated that two sets of tees be available as the most practical way to ensure that daily players could enjoy the game despite their physical limitations while still enabling the course to challenge competitive players in events and higher matches:
It seems a good idea to have two sets of tees, as we have at Garden City, one set placed forward for ordinary play and the other further back for first-class matches and competitions.
After 112 subsequent years of technological advancements widening the gap between the weaker player and the stronger player, the case for multiple tees has certainly not weakened.
The takeaway of the essay, to me, is that the advent of multiple tees was never about allowing everyone to make "par," proving the flaw in the whole premise of the original post. Par wouldn't have been all that important a notion to the golfers of 1902, and thus there would have been no reason to have more than one set of tees on its account. Instead, Emmet refers to the importance that nothing "be done which will make it impossible for shorter players and beginners to enjoy the game." For the vast majority of those players, I would suggest that an endless barrage of "advancement shots" with 3 woods hampers their enjoyment, even if they have hazards to tack their way around.
I am fully in agreement with the idea that:
it would be most unreasonable for the short player to complain because his expert opponent can reach a green 400 yards away in two strokes, and maybe have a reasonable putt for a three, and to demand that in deference to his limited powers the hole be reduced to a distance of 350 yards so that he too can reach the green in two shots. Such a demand seems to me contemptible and unsportsmanlike, and, above all, most un-American.”
Some courses today seem to strive for such an ideal, which I would agree is misguided. Courses don't need tees at every distance interval such that every player can reach greens in regulation and hit the same clubs on approaches and so forth. They simply need a common-sense number of tees that allow everyone a chance to enjoy the game while still feeling challenged. Interestingly, that feeling of being challenged seems to have little to do with score, as Paul misguidedly suggested earlier when he said this:
As a low capper I'm always somewhat bemused when a high handicap man tells me that the 6,300 yard course is to easy for him, usually said with a straight face and a card saying 95 in his hand. I'm not sure how it's too easy (and implied in that is that it's too short for him, apparently) when my 78 says it was anything but easy for me.
This anecdote simply reinforces what I've believed all along - people don't decide that courses are too hard because they can't make pars, and they don't decide that they're too easy because they shoot low scores. Courses are too hard when playing them becomes a monotonous chore (such as an endless barrage of 3 wood advancement shots), and they're too easy when playing them is boringly uneventful. It's ironic that we can bemoan the average golfer's preoccupation with par in one breath, and then suggest that he's a fool for thinking that a course is easy despite his inability to break par on it in the next breath.