I need no information on the parts of my game that need improvement, believe me.
I know you guys are much more into the "Oh my god, that was awesome I really got screwed and had to take an X" kind of thing than I am. I'm sure it makes you much more complete and highly evolved as golfers and as persons.
And as I say, I'm cool with a few such features. But I don't play courses at the beach that alternate between water right/OB left and water left/OB right for eighteen holes. Nor would I choose to play a links course with, to use Sean's example, 100 harshly penal bunkers scattered throughout.
All of which is just personal preferences. But the point is, there is no inherent superiority of a pot bunker that I can't get the ball out of versus some other bunker that takes a good swing (or maybe two attempts) for me to get out of versus some other bunker that I can knock the ball onto the green as often as not. More penal is not better.
In fact, that's my dispute with the entire tenor of these discussions. For some of you guys, if it's a bunker then apparently the more penal the better. Where does that come from? I guess you just make it up and repeat it often enough that it starts to seem like a Rule of Golf.
I like variety. I think encountering the following scenario is absolutely ideal:
1) There's one side of a green protected by a deepish/steepish bunker
2) One side protected by thickish rough
3) Another protected by the fact you're short-sided and the green runs away
4) And none of the three options is clearly an absolutely don't-go-there-ever penal hazard
In that scenario, you have to guess at your likely misses and you have to know your own game in terms of which miss might be somewhat more or less challenging than the others. Taking that bunker and making it water-hazard-penal for a 16-handicapper does not improve the setup at all. It both makes the hole more frustrating when you end up there anyway and it presents one less option.
Whatever happened to "recovery shots are one of the most exciting elements of the game". Seems I used to hear that said around here all the time. Now it's been drowned out by a bunch of whining about how Tour players get out of bunkers too easily and we ought to take away the rakes, blah, blah, blah.
If you really want multiple sides of the green surrounded by must-avoid hazards for elite players than you're looking at a steady diet of island greens. Just build the 17th at Sawgrass a dozen or so times and put it around all the Par 5's and half the Par 4's. They won't be getting up and down from that water. If you're going to have a bunker protecting a green (or a side of a fairway) then presumably the architect INTENDS for it to have a certain non-extreme cost to the player who hits his ball there. For that cost to be a 50/50 chance of an up-and-down for the best players in the world does not mean the bunker is broken. It means that's a spot they can get up and down from half the time. Nothing more or nothing less.
To paraphrase Freud, sometimes a bunker is just a bunker.