Mark Fine,
You're wrong. My fascination with the hole has nothing to do with it being photogenic.
It's not the blow-out bunkers that fascinate me, it's the configuration of the green and the angle of attack from the upper tee, combined with the wind.
Look at Neil's last photo and then study how effectively small the green plays from that angle.
Shots hit on the right front will likely roll back off the green, down into the fronting area. Back left is almost impossible to hit.
Short is disastrous, right, more so, long, if you can find your ball might not be so bad.
It's one of the most challenging par 3 holes I've ever encountered from the upper tee and a nice par 3 from the lower tee.
In the half a dozen or more times I played it from the lower tee I don't think I made one bogey. If I had played it from the upper tee, I don't think I would have made one par, and normally, going from 140 to 180, from a lower tee to an upper tee, where you pick up 10 to 20 yards, shouldn't have that dramatic of an impact, but, it does, and that's one of the things that fascinates me about # 17.
Have you been to Sand Hills and walked up to the upper tee ?
Have you played the hole from the upper tee ?
# 7 at Pebble Beach is a pushover compared to # 17 from the upper tee.
While the wind may blow, the lower tee can be shielded from its effect. Not so with the upper tee where the golfer is even more intimidated by the length and angle he's confronted with as he views the green, and the wind as it destabilizes him over the ball.