In fairness to Geroge Thomas's half stroke for a putt proposal it clearly wasn't a situation of Thomas not liking putting but was simply more a mathematical analysis involving analyzing the overall value of a single club's impact on scoring in golf.
And as a consequence of that Thomas believed it could also have some interesting ramifications of how golf courses could be designed. But certainly despite some real validity of all that Thomas was proposing in those two interesting veins, I'm sure he and others realized that just the idea alone that any stroke counting one half shot even that of the percentage dominant putter was probably too radical and untraditional an idea for golf to take seriously enough to impliment.
But anyway, the mathematical analysis of the percentage dominant putter simply went like this;
On a par 72 hole golf course in the strict whole stroke par concept for putting (all strokes), the expected percentage of putting was 36 strokes which equals a percentage use of the putter of 50% per round.
Under Thomas's half stroke for putts proposal given his reconfiguration for whole par and half par holes that overall expected percentage for putting would have been reduced to 33 1/3% for the putter (total par-54, total putts=18, percentage putts 54 divided by 18=33 1/3%). That he thought still gave the putter a very dominant single club roll in scoring.
But his logic from there and how it could have some interesting ramifications on design and construction in architecture is interesting. He viewed it in one sense as a cost saver in both construction and maintenance primarily as he felt not so many bunkers would need to be built and maintained.
But again, to institute a system such as this does create a greater bias toward excellence in golf, certainly on the long shots and full strokes (off the putting green) and does remove to a certain degree the impact of the luck of putting in golf with lesser quality players.
That alone, personally, I think is probably not a good thing in the game as that unexpected "leveling" happenstance of putting in whole strokes is one of the more interesting things about golf and one that a good player must simply get used to mentally and not let bother him!
In golf's old tortoise and hare analogy a half stroke for putts is definitely a real bias toward the hare and against the tortoise!