There are two things that happen to everybody playing this hole.
First they think the two fairway bunkers are at the same distance. This is a trick that I gleaned from reading "Visual Intelligence; How we create what we see" by Donald D Hoffman, a book that describes the rules that govern our perception of line, colour, form, depth and motion (should be compulsory reading for every GCA with a brain
). In short it explains that our mind thinks that objects that are close together visually, are also close in distance. That's why these bunkers look to be equal distance from the tees, but in reality are 50 m apart.
Second everybody wants to hit the ball over the first left bunker, even though the best line of play is to hit it to the right, because you get a much better angle into the green from the right (only disadvantage being that the shot often is blind). In many cases this ends up with difficult bunker shots or losts ball left in the rough, so far one of the few exceptions was the pro who hit a perfect 300 m drive over the left bunker and then hit a wedge in on a windless day.
If the flag is on the left side of the green it is very difficult to get close to it with anything more than a 7 iron (I often have been hitting 5 irons in with the prevailing wind). The choice then is either to
- hit it in the bunker before the green,
- chip back from over the green (which is a very hard shot), or
- lay up on the right and go for the long up and down chip (often easier).
In some sense the second shot has some of the same issues one faces when playing TOC road hole.