I wouldn’t agree with that. Memorising openings is something you do so that you don’t have to repeatedly calculate every tactic in a position, and to help you reach a favourable mid game

Besides, once you get into the middlegame, you still need the tactical and positional skills that I suspect you consider opening knowledge a crutch for

In chess (and life) it’s far easier to pattern match a solution for a position rather than coming up with a brand new solution every time

In my opinion, this makes memory and experience far more important than intellect in chess, especially in the faster time formats