John,
One could argue there's little reward for skill on the tee shot, and that somehow diminishes the accomplishment of making a good score on the hole. I'm not saying I agree, but consider the options:
1) Hitting it over on the left side means threading the needle between the bunkers--i.e., you have to be lucky, not skillful, especially when you consider the wind is often howling on that bluff. I hit it over there once with a 3- or 5-wood, and as I walked up and saw my ball sitting in between the hazards, indeed I felt lucky to have avoided them. I remember having a good look at the green with a mid-iron.
2) If you hit it on purpose or by accident over to the right, the ball can keep rolling and rolling, either into the baranca or into the bunker at the end of the fairway. I did that once too, and felt lucky to have found the bunker. Of course the approach shot from there is no picnic--a mid-iron from a bunker with ~160 yds of carry, I'm guessing, but at least my ball was in play.
3) I suppose you could bunt it around the hole with a 5-iron, 5-iron, wedge or something--I've never tried that one.
So it seems like the only sensible thing is to aim left, hope you avoid the bunkers and find your ball up on that plateau, or if not that it gently rolls down into the middle. The better look at the green is from the plateau--but it's not much of a reward--no matter where you are, as you said, the second shot is challenging, and as John Kirk observed, the green is intimidating.
I like the hole, but I find little to complain about when playing golf in Bandon, Oregon. If that hole was on a course full of similarly penal-unless-you're-lucky holes, maybe I would have a less charitable view.