jackal, on paper your analysis seems sound, though one could argue that finding a beach in the deck can be more easily achieved. After all, you could always N/Juniper your starting hand away, giving you a fresh chance at drawing one of the ones in your deck, or if you run Skyla, can simply search for it if you start with Skyla. I think it's a little bit weird that people are hyping up Tropical Beach THIS much, since as you accurately portray, its biggest advantage is on the first turn of the game if you even go first. However, since I don't play as competitively as I used to, I find it hard to argue with people who are better players since I don't have much of a leg to stand on.
Here's a very interesting idea though, that can drop the popularity (or power) of Tropical Beach without anything happening to it: releasing more cards with a similar end effect. As in, remember Call Energy? What if we had more cards that had a 'do this power, but you can't attack' and have them simply be on par with what Beach does? Like, a basic Pokemon with that power that allows you to essentially Call for Family, or that allows you to search your deck for a Basic Energy and attach it to one of your Pokemon. If we have enough alternate powers like this, maybe Beach won't be so widely used. Let's face it, what other cards do we have right now with the same ability as Beach?