I feel like I've read a lot of articles recently insisting that people are spending a little more of their disposable income on "experiences" like (golf) vacations, rather than possessions, lately. If anything, that probably puts a bigger emphasis on the need for golf courses (and their developers) to create as strong a first impression as possible, which runs a little bit against what much of our merry band of golfers seems to believe constitutes the very best sort of architecture: courses that pull you in the first time, but reveal themselves to be even better over multiple rounds.
If it turns out to be the case that water becomes a markedly more and more precious commodity over the coming decades, I wonder if those wide fairways might become a bit of a burden to certain layouts.
Peter, I think your formula is excellent in a vacuum, and still really good in reality, but I wonder whether there are certain external factors that are going to conspire to put some limits on that formula over time.
So, to answer your question, "Yes." But either that Age might not turn out to be Golden, or it may be somewhat brief.