Tom, first let me explain the topo of the hole
Fairly sharp rise to the dogleg - the uphill carry in the middle of the first diagonal set of two bunkers is 220 yds, with no forward tee on this hole for all the years I played it and an uneven lie in the fairway for you second.
The left bunker at the corner is at perfect yardage and cuts down all but long hitters from cutting the dog leg ..... too risky a shot to cut the dog-leg anyhow because, not shown on this drawing are the branches of a very large tree and large trees continue down the entire left side of the hole beyond the corner all the way to the green. This is where Bobby Jones got in trouble - he got on the left side of the tree line where the land is WELL below regular fairway - you can be 20 feet down in that area. From there you can hardly clear (over) the large trees and the line of tree trunks is hard to "thread" a ball thru.
So the left dog-leg area bunker MUST stay!
.............. However: that center bunker in the first set is partial key to the true strategy of the Raynor Prize Dog-Leg design, so looking at it from that perspective, that middle bunker at the crest of the hill is very important for this style hole.
..... another “however”: I never saw that center bunker while playing there in the late 50's, 60's and early 70's. I doubt if the club ever let him put that bunker in (on the upper (East) course, Raynor and Banks offered about 130 bunkers on the original plan and the club only let them put in less than 80, if I remember correctly)
This is a tricky drive for a good player. He should hit a draw, He NEEDS a long dive for this killer par-4 but if he doesn’t draw the ball he ends up in the bunker on the far side, going thru the fairway - either in the bunker or thru the tree line on the other side of the fairway.
That bunker was NEVER put in but the tree line served the same purpose
Once you’ve turned the dog-leg the rest of the fairway is level to a perched up, bunkerless green. That large green was very hard to hit and back left pins were near impossible to get to - very steep falloff to the if you miss the green left. It was sort of like 17-TOC: play your second to the right front and hope to get up and down. The green is about three feet above the fairway on the direct line of play (I think they put in some sort of Redan-like bunker in that inside corner of the green in later) - the hole needed NO bunker around the green.
Note in my drawing the lines around the green are fall-offs, not bunkering.
The 3 bunkers short of the green: I drew their positioning as they appeared on their concept plan but I think they would be perfect if they were a continuous set of three crossbunkers that were about 40 or so yards short of the green.
As far as I know those three bunkers were never built! Too bad
Balls hit over the shallow (front to back) green fell off to a bad lie and there was cart path there also. Very few balls went over this green - esp on the second shot.
4 was a great score and you could often win the hole with bogey.
So in all when I played the hole and I think even before, there was just a bunker at the corner of the dogleg in the edge of the rough - actually I think for a while we has a set of two at the corner for a while, none in the fairway.
Pat Mucci played this hole many, many times and I hope he will chime in on its greatness.
My explanation does not do it proper justice.