What started then, any examples, pictures, replays?
Scorecard lengths have been "wrong" most of the time, on real golf courses, too. There, they cover the official survey results, while the tee markers are being moved back and forth by the greenkeepers. Here, several influences are active, differing over the game's history..
In general, the scorecard distances are shown correctly on Par3s but vary on the other holes. The true distance !to the pin! is always available when hovering over the blue dot on the mini map.
Some courses like STA show the distances from printed scorecards, valid to one pin. The other pin is different of course, e.g. coming into play on STA#10.
On BPB and other courses, the track lengths of a certain USO round are used for the back tees (cf. BPB #15 where it is shorter than from Master tee)
Later (e.g. @OLY), something indifferent like center of the green is used.