Thank you, gents - fine posts, and I'm enjoying this thread very much.
Yes, the 5th seems a terrific hole as well. Interestingly, it seems to me a more modern golf hole - in both aesthetics and design conception; indeed, it looks like a golf hole that C&C or Tommy D would build today (while the 2nd looks more like what a Colt or MacKenzie might've found -- or have appeared to find -- back then).
I take the 'criticisms' that the 2nd might be too challenging and/or one dimensional seriously; and yet, for whatever combination of reasons I still think it the epitome of a golf hole - the perfect one. Now, that doesn't mean that I'd need or want 18 such holes in a row; its perfection doesn't lie there. Instead, it lies in such a perfect -- to me -- blending of form and function, and also lies in the fact that it serves a clear and distinct purpose/role in the context of a round of golf, and does so as if Mother Nature herself had fashioned it for that purpose.
In other words - does it have "flaws'? Perhaps - I'll even take your word for it. But its perfection, to my mind, is not dimmed but in fact highlighted by these 'flaws'.
Man, I can't get over how much I like this golf hole.
Peter