Matt,
To me, points two and four are the most valid, along with a hybrid of point three - uninspiring in a design sense.
I don't want to run over my usual rash of weak holes, so I'll pick another from my - and your- experience, the 7th at Gunnamatta.
To me it's a weak hole primarily because the green looks like a stock-standard two-tiered job from the Architect's Book of Handy Green Designs. Newton, Grant and Spencer could have put that green at Huntingdale without problem.
For such a wide open fairway which is presumably so wide in order to lull the unthinking big hitter into biffing it anyway on the fairway and then finding themselves out of position, the bunkering of the green complex tells you exactly where you have to hit it.
So it's a hole you could have at any course, and nothing uniquely specific to the particular one you are playing - so maybe that is another definition of a weak hole.
And I don't want to hear any crap from Mike Clayton or Tom Doak
about how it is a linking hole between 6 and 8 - there is a lot more that could have been done there to make it more interesting, whilst still keeping the demands for the player the same.
And bugger it, I am going to sound off on Kingston Heath 4. It's a weak hole. The fact that it is on uninspiring land is no defence, as so to is the marvellous hole that precedes it.
It could have been designed in any number of ways - but the fairway bunkering and green orientation is like so many other holes at KH. It's weak, weak, weak.
But only at KH, of course. Put it on National Ocean and it might be the best hole on the course?