I think there is a lot of philosophical ambiguity in the purpose of separate teeing locations in golf. I think it would be good for the sport if we sort of nailed down the language a bit better. The ambiguity in the statement generally is:
"To make the course harder for better players"
To me, there are three sets of reasons you might have different teeing locations:
1. (Probably the most common idea people have) To allow players with different driving distances to interact with the same set of obstacles off the tee.
2. To make the shot off the tee more difficult/challenging/penal, more challenging angles, tougher (not necessarily longer) carries, etc. E.g. tees that require shot shaping. Tees that send the ball over a hazard instead of rough. Tees that increase the effects of prevailing winds.
3. To create an entirely different hole by changing the distances. E.g. a par 3 becomes a par 4 or 5 from the different location, which should completely change how the hole is played.
The amount of conflation I see with these is, I think, fine, but extremely detrimental to how we ask players to choose teeing locations. The issue here is subtle, but I think it's a heavy contributor to the "distance = skill" mantra that much of our culture suffers from. At the end of the day it becomes extremely difficult to tell someone who hits 275 poorly off the tees, that they should/shouldn't be playing from the back tees, and someone who hits 200 dead center every time to play from the front tees.
Unless we are more deliberate with what we mean by teeing locations, we cannot challenge the 200 yard drive ace unless we create a set of tees that focus on more challenging shots, rather than more distance.