I was discussing this with someone recently as it relates to the remodeled / restored (I ad kit I'm not sure) 17th at Cherry Hills.
It's a 550 yard par 5 to an island green, but given the altitude of Colorado, actually very reachable for a good player. The Doak team's work there added or restored cross bunkers at two points in the fairway.
I'm most familiar with the course from prior to the restoration and my initial take was that I preferred the old version, where you could either try to kill a drive in the hopes of getting down in two, which brings into play the potential for a wayward drive that could find either significant tree trouble or even OB, or you could throttle down, hit the fairway, and make it a three shot hole.
What I know of the current version of the hole comes from watching the US Am there a few years ago and last fall's BMW Championship. Most of the players in those competitions could clear the first set of bunkers with a good drive (but even a slight mishit wasn't guaranteed to clear, even McIlroy failed to carry the bunkers in one round). I guess I sort of assumed that meant for a mortal player, that meant the bunkers were located in an area where they might restrict a player from hitting driver, which I didn't like.
The argument I got back was that it's over 300 yards (Google actually gives me about 320) to the end of the fairway, so it's probably only talking driver out of the hands of a few players. I'm not entirely sure that's right, however. Again, given the altitude, anyone playing the back tees is very possibly long enough to reach those bunkers. Then if you factor in what the hole plays from the member tee, how the course typically plays firm, etc, it still seems problematic.
But this gets into the central question which is, even if you do take the notion that a "forced layup" is bad, how far away must something be before it's out of range of anyone? If Bubba can reach it? The average pro? A good member? An average member?
So, in this case, I think I'd prefer the hole if the bunkers pinched the fairway, but still allowed a big, perfectly placed drive to get through. That's the argument I think Ben and Josh are lobbying for, as well--make driver be reckless, but possible.