Oddly, here in Ontario and Western Quebec, we had a short-lived fad of holes playing headlong into often really shallow yet amply wide green surfaces that are raised anywhere between 10 and 20 feet from the fairway. Thomas McBroom, in particular, did this repeatedly at the golf courses that he built in the 90s and 00s in Mont-Tremblant and in the Muskokas.
He definitely overused the trope, but I do find that it works decently well on holes between 350-400 yards, when you're left with merely a finicky flip wedge in, more so than on the longer holes, when you're approaching with a mid iron or so. Considering how much the game has become a driver-wedge affair, I do think that benched - and obscured - green pads are an effective way of adding interest to holes of this length especially