I agree, the shortcut is awkward. And I never use it. But the good news is that it can be remapped. Though I think you'd need to use a third-party utility to remap it. Mac OS' own keyboard properties only allow creating new keyboard shortcuts linked to menu commands, not other keyboard shortcuts.

The Fn keys are too handy with their default actions, especially on the newer keyboards, so while there's the option you mentioned, which I used to use, I don't use it anymore on my MacBook Pro nor with the BT mini keyboard.

There's no CTRL on the right side on the MacBook nor BT mini keyboards. You should be able to map one of the other modifiers on the right, but as you've noted, CTRL isn't really required for much of anything, so I wouldn't bother with that either.

I probably will map CAPS lock to CTRL though, if only for use in Terminal. Otherwse I always keep CAPS lock disabled anyway.