Hole #4 is a par 4
Black tee is 463
Green tee is 449
I can only imagine playing this hole in the brutal winter wind. In the summer, the hole plays much shorter than the yardage suggests. The impact of standing on the tee with the 100 foot cliff and the Pacific Ocean directly to your right will impact the first-timers swing more than the length of the hole. It's not uncommon for a moderate hitter to creep inside 150 on the approach with the strong wind and firm & fast conditions. From 150 it is a 9-iron or less with that same wind.
As with most holes on this course, there is plenty of room in the fairway. The ocean steers the weak-minded player to the left, and from there the trap is sprung. There's a lot of bunkering, rough, junk, you name it on the left. To make matter worse, from the left side the dune bunker guarding the left side of the green is brought into play. Speaking from experience, there isn't much worse than being in the bunker on the front of the greenside dune, having to hit a blind shot over the dune to land it on the green (with the ocean as the backdrop if you hit too far.)
It's a testament to the strength of the front nine at Pacific Dunes that the only hole on the ocean is spectacular, but may be no better than the 5th best hole in that set.
View from the tee out on the cliff
The fairway
Looking back on the hole
Again looking back, this time as the sun goes down
One of the coolest rounds I played out there was when the fog rolled in from the ocean for holes #4 - #8. Here's the tee shot as the fog approached (Just wait till you see how quickly it moves in when I get to photos on #5 and #6.)
Fog still moving in. Here's the fairway from the left side with a peek at a couple of the fairway bunkers which are definitely in play from the tee. In the distance over the right most portion of the fairway bunker, you can see the dangerous dune bunkers by the green.
One more view looking back. The fog is really setting in. It took me 5 years to figure out this bunker existed behind the 4th green.