I have cut holes. I was a college student and worked at a golf course for two summers. Obviously, I have other experience in golf courses and how they play. I have also used my CAD system to draw those colored "heat maps" based on collected field data. It's actually kind of fascinating. Before retirement, one thing I learned was that the contours on greens look way different than the way I imagined them before.
For anyone who knows contour maps, you will know that a road with a crown shows up as almost no "bump" for the crown on a steep road, but that same 6" crown on a flat road goes for hundreds of feet, which looks impossible. Similarly, the contour lines I drew by eye turn out to look like deeper canyons than gentle swales on 1.5-3% green surfaces.
The programs that supplement these heat maps can be quite precise. The course still needs human input to set up the program, and as usual, garbage in, garbage out. The course needs to go out and show the pin positions that are iffy at various green speeds. That, BTW, is something I learned from TEPaul on this forum years ago - just go measure the slopes on the pin positions that give you trouble and hold the % slope below that in any cup setting or renovation. I have done it ever since, and found that the USGA and Masters methods of holding pins on crossed measured slopes at any point on the green worked! It used to be, at speeds of 13, that using a digital level to measure at 90deg. angles to each other should total less than 5.5, i.e., 2.75% downhill + 2.75% cross slope is the max cuppable at 13.) Now, with greens at 15 for those tournaments, the total must be 5 or less.
And once you start measuring like that, with that level of precision, there is nothing you can do better than use a slope program and mapping it. Yes, not as romantic as the old course where pin locations were set at cross points from nearby steeples and other features to get it exactly where it needed to be. But the human eye can be fooled, even if quite experienced, especially in sloping ground which can sometimes make contours look different than they actually are.
The program factors in different speeds, which still must be measured with a stimpmeter to get the critical slopes for various seasonal differences or tournament speeds. And the program can be set to those anticipated speeds for any situation. The winter map typically shows far less green area than the summer map, etc. (green being cupping space, orange borderline, and red a no go). And, the green is gridded off to make getting the cup where it should be easier to locate.
I will also add that where I worked, the cup setting job was usually given to the least qualified guy (who wouldn't yet be trusted to run a greens mower and other equipment) at least for daily settings. Yes, the pro shop dictated where the pins went for tournaments. In my case, as a golfer, it was an upgrade over the previous guy who wasn't a golfer. I suspect that with labor shortages today (which I don't see ending soon) it might be more important to have someone from above (reading that computerized heat map) give some help in setting those cups.
I don't get the negative reaction. As Erik notes, everything is moving from more art to more science (and than God for that. Do we still prefer blood letting to micro surgery?) And if you are serious, why don't we start a thread on how robotic mowers cannot mow as well as humans? That is coming, too.