Regarding UEL and difficulty, already discussed many times - lie unevenness can be reduced to more realistic, but additional factors that make playing difficult (and realistic) can be added, like variable wind (with shown direction and strength only reflecting expected but not actual value), occasional really bad shots upon misdings (e.g. IRL by screwing up a flop one can get 50 or 60 yds instead of 30), and finally WORSE best equipment (e.g. with the highest accuracy corresponding to 3.5 of current stars). Of course not to mention dealing with cheaters.
I don't know what is the best way to implement this - probably variable wind and bad shots can be added to UEL (while making them more realistic), where it can be tested thoroughly. Then making equipment less accurate should be done at once and across the board, proportionally to all clubs, so that nobody is unhappy...
But surely this part is only about the game being realistic. For top players who played over 1000 rounds I guess the only motivations remaining are fun to try to new courses, settings, but mostly fun to win (so long as it happens frequently enough). And of course with the Elite Collection pretty much dysfunctional this latter motivation diminishes. For this reason, I already gifted over 30k credits to people (many of which I suppose are paying members) and intend to keep doing so until the situation with the elite collection changes (or I get bored and quit the game as well...)