I think the hole and its immediacy in the routing is brilliant.
Your first hole "gentle handshake" often becomes a mano-a-mano brawl two swings later. I've played this hole over a dozen times and a miss right or left is a mood-changer for sure. Bogies or worse leap in probability. Something short or in one of the front of the (well-placed) bunkers leaves a modicum of hope for avoiding such an outcome. Only a shot onto the green's shrunken effective landing area can reduce a knowledgable player's tension.
Few, if any, copies of this exist elsewhere in golf, maybe for a good reason yielding to its native difficulty, yet as a boldly-designed piece of substantial golf architecture, it's ingenious. In so many ways, I think this genius reappears periodically in shots on holes like Riviera#10, Myopia #9, Plainfield#11, Seminole#17, Crystal Downs#9, SHinnecock#11 et.al.
As for concern about the hole's maintenance, how else should it be presented?? Most other practices would mollify or neuter the hole's greatness.
FWIW, by no means does the following stretch of holes rely on penal architecture. Only arriving on the approach shot at #14 does a similar emotional fear reappear.