I recently finished an essay about the game design aspects of luck, but applied to golf. I think I'd bring it up here, and see if actual course designers think about luck and skill in the same way that video/tabletop game designers do.
The main contention is that luck and skill are two
different elements of design, they are not actually in opposition to each other. Luck is effectively takes the form of different types of randomness. At the end of the day, skill should/will be the determining factor in winning, but luck can act to reduce the amount of one-to-one correlation between skill and winning. Why? Because when skill is perfectly tied to winning the game becomes more of a measurement, e.g., nobody wants to play "who's taller" because it seems pointless.
To illustrate this concept, we can graph games like this:
Generally we can have high-luck, low-skill games (like bingo), or high-skill low-luck games (like chess). The concept here should be pretty straight forward.
Now, applying these concepts to course design, we can see where different types of golf holes might fall:
Low Luck & Low Skill:
#8, Hollins, Sharp Park -- Almost nobody will know this hole, for good reason. It's just a 90 yard shot, with trees blocking the wind, gentle back to front green, with minimal contours. It now exists as a relaxation hole, after three of the hardest holes on the course in a row. Originally it was played from different angles and had severe bunkering and ocean winds, but that has been lost.
Low Luck & High Skill:
#5 Bethpage Black -- Most people here will be familiar with this hole. There isn't really a way to play this hole without being a highly skilled player, and there are strategic tradeoffs on the hole, but players can generally expect to get what they deserve here. Poorly skill players will be severely punished, and highly skilled players will be rewarded.
High Luck & High Skill: #17, Road, St Andrews -- Everyone knows the road hole, so it should be pretty clear how luck does play a factor on the hole. Firstly, the tee shot is blind. It plays to an area where out-of-bounds is a few yards from the fairway. There are high winds. Many of these elements also come into play on the approach, where a gust of wind can be the difference between holding the green and ending up in the road hole bunker or even up against the wall.
High Luck & Low Skill: #8, The Postage Stamp, Royal Troon -- This one will be the most controversial, but I contend that a 135 yard, downhill par 3 is actually a fairly low skill shot. However, in the wind the ball cannot really be placed exactly where we want it to, and the consequences are obviously severe here. To support it's position here, I suspect this is the only hole where a mid-handicapper could not too infrequently beat a professional, whereas I feel that would be all but impossible on each of the other holes.
I actually thought about using Little Eye as an the high-luck, low-skill, as it was recently/infamously meant to play this roll at the Open. I really think that professional players (and many of their fans) genuinely dislike high-luck holes, for fairly obvious reasons, but I've always enjoyed them. I see them like the NCAA win-or-go-home excitement vs the NBA seven games of proof-of-skill. I can understand how placing a high-luck hole near the end of a tournament can be exciting, but frustrating for fans, so I think if we want to add drama at the end of a tournament, we are better off with a high-luck hole that requires high skill. That way the drama will be there, but it doesn't seem arbitrary.
Anyway, that's the general thesis, really just pointing out that the two parts of design are not in opposition to each other.
I do also go into types of randomness. Input-randomness, which is randomness that players can strategically react to (tee location, hole location, general wind speeds, etc), which is very different from output randomness. Output randomness is randomness that happens after a player action, i.e. golf shot, and can be fun or frustrating depending on the result. The most hated types of output randomness are ending up in divot in the middle of the fairway, or deep in a footprint in a bunker. However, there are many times when people love output randomness, like when the ball bounces off a tree back into the fairway, or when you hit a sprinkler head cover and get an extra 20 yards on your drive.
Anyway, that's what I've been thinking about for the last month or so. I'm curious as to whether course designer think about luck/randomness in these terms.