Sully:
I knew you weren't trying to knock it, but rather to understand it. No problems there.
And admittedly, the "I am only here once, no way do I lay up" part of this does come into play. But that was not what I meant at all.
Adam gets to the heart of it - the carry is actually "only" 197 yards. It takes a golfer VERY into strategy, or his match, or his score, or with a keen sense of his limitations, to just give up and go left. And as Evan has also now attested, what complicates things even more is the shot to the left is not all that easy... you pick your poison but generally it's at least 150-160, over water, to an area that's not all that deep.. short is water, long is worse. And if one can hit a 150 yard shot to an area like that, what's stopping him from going for the extra 40 yards? THAT is the point here... there's a lot more going on that would otherwise be apparent.
BTW, when I said the hole has one more option than damn near all other par threes, I meant one viable, usable, defined and tempting one. Of course one could putt to the front of the tee box on any given hole. But I figured we were above Mucci-istic semantic battles on this thread.
