When you say "OSM doesn't play nice with nodes that close together", I'm guessing you are talking about the iD editor, or maybe another editor that "snaps" nodes together when you get close. You should be able to zoom in another zoom level or two which will separate the points enough to make snapping not be an issue.

Vintage Club looks great. That's textbook fairway mapping for greens that don't have an (obvious) fringe.

What makes you say that golf holes must have a total of three nodes? I've never heard that before. I pulled up a bunch of classic, real-world golf course maps and every one of the the par-3, straight shot, holes each had a straight, 2 node, line defining them. Is this a rule imposed by simulators?

For your amusement, check out this golf hole: https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/975834938

At some point, I'd like to clean all of those up. Especially where people have erroneously added shared points to every tee, fairway, bunker, and green that they intersect with.