With this in mind,
I've come to the conclusion that it's practically impossible to make a course that good players can't defeat. Even our 10,000 foot wooded courses routinely get shredded by the top pros (Iron Hill, WR Jackson, Maple Hill, Hornets Nest). They're gonna lace 500' drives in the woods, and they're gonna hit some 50' putts, they're gonna get a ton of birdies, and there's nothing we can do about it.
However, what we can do is prevent them from saving birdie or par when they have an errant shot. If a player misses the fairway, I want to punish them for missing. None of this "save it with a great shot" nonsense. If you go off the fairway, you barely deserve a par, much less any chance in hell of a birdie. Unfortunately, the only way to accomplish this is narrow fairways with ungodly thick rough, or massive amounts of OB.
This also means that you have to reserve the rough for truly bad shots, not just unlucky kicks. No more chaos trees in the middle of the fairway, no more multi-route fairways. Just a single fairway, as narrow as possible but wide enough to be fair, and no clearing anything off the fairway. Throw in some doglegs to prevent eagle possibilities. No over-the-top lines ever allowed. Hell, stick in some windmills and waterfalls while we're at it.