Above, the 18th at Southern Hills in Tulsa is a better finishing hole than 18 at Bethpage.
Closing the Deal
BETHPAGE, NY – Golf writers from across the globe are uniformly falling all over themselves to vilify Bethpage Black’s short, dictatorial 18th hole as one of the worst finishing holes in major championship golf. But what should a truly great 18th hole comprise in order to be great? Should an 18th hole be a summation of the design elements of the 17 that came before? Should it be the prettiest hole on the course? Or is it just a way to get back to the clubhouse and call it a day? Let’s take a look at various finishing holes across the four major golf championships, and compare and contrast their pros and cons.
U.S. Opens/PGA Championships
Bethpage Black – Par-4, 411 yards – A 5-wood to a wasp-waisted fairway, then a short iron uphill to the green. The hole is neither a summation of what came before – big brutish par-4s with strategic cross-hazards – nor is it a risk-reward hole where birdie awaits the player who dares carry a hazard. It’s also the wettest hole on the course. “It’s built on a swamp, and right now it is a swamp,” quipped U.S.G.A. vice president Jim Hyler Wednesday morning…and that was before Michael Phelps started doing laps in the middle of the fairway between golfers.
Winged Foot – Par-4, 450 yards – No major championship venue has more of a devastating synergy of history and misery as Winged Foot, and few holes at Winged Foot can match the hole called “Revelations” as a stage worthy of Shakespearean drama. A hard-curving dog-leg left to a pedestal green with heaving undulations and a wicked false front, it makes for a nerve-wracking finish. Most recently, Phil Mickelson, Padraig Harrington, Jim Furyk, and Colin Montgomerie all fell to pieces leaving Geoff Ogilvy the winner in 2006.
Garden City Golf Club – Par-3, 190 yards – Tom Doak called it the greatest Eden Hole he’d ever seen. The host of the 1902 U.S. Open has two deep front bunkers, a pond, and a strip bunker behind, while sitting below the outstretched arms of the clubhouse while the grand Garden City Hotel towers over the whole scene. Imagine…a hole-in-one to end a U.S. Open…
Pebble Beach – Par-5, 543 yards – More journalists named this America’s Iconic major championship finishing hole by a wide margin than any other hole. Hard by the Pacific, some say this hole is more photographed than the 7th. 18 at Pebble has seen four decades of golf history: from Nicklaus to Watson, from Crosby to Woods. Now that you can finally hit it in two, it should be even more dramatic.
Riviera C.C. – Par-4, 472 yards – Both beautiful and difficult, Tom Watson picked it as the finish to his dream 18. Framed by canyons and eucalyptus trees, it’s one of the most identifiable holes in golf and has seen grand theatre for many decades, including the 1983 PGA Championship battle where Jack Nicklaus and Peter Jacobsen provided epic Sunday charges with 65 and 66 respectively, but fell short of gritty Hal Sutton, who won his only major.
Torrey Pines Golf Club – Par-5 – This hole can’t make up its mind whether it’s a par-4 or par-5, but either way – Tiger Woods aside – a finishing hole with a fake pond and fountain on a cliffside and canyons golf course is just discordant. Some say the chance to finish with eagle, makes up for being incongruous to the rest of the course. Woods would agree.
Baltusrol (Lower) – This is a much better example of a challenging par-5 closer than Torrey. The second of back-to-back par-5s to close the round, you can’t deny this hole has seen exciting finish after exciting finish. Ed Furgol – the man whose left arm was withered by polio as a child made a gritty par after hitting in to the 18th fairway of the Upper course, than hitting back over the trees onto the Lower Course’s green to win by one. In 1980 Jack Nicklaus held off Aoki, and won his second Open at Baltusrol to rousing choruses of “Jack is back!” that still echo in eternity.
Oakland Hills C.C. (South Course) – Some people hate, it, but I love it. A true par-4-1/2 that I like as a 4 because it demands your best drive of the day, and your best approach to close with a par, this dog-leg right with a green as curvaceous as Beyonce is one of the crown jewels in this Ross masterpiece. She’d be even better if they’d shave the rough and let all the fairway undulations come alive. Fast and firm conditions would insure balls would spill every which way.
Southern Hills – Dan Jenkins called this course the dog-leg capital of the world, but there is still a great deal of strategy to the course and excellent greens. 18 is truly a summation of all that came before. A long, precise drive must find the correct slot in the dog-leg, and avoid the cross bunkers and burn to offer a good angle uphill to a fiercely contoured green precariously perched atop a plateau. How many missed putts were there on Championship Sunday 2001? Plus, the front and right bunkers are monsters, up and down out of either is brilliant. In 1958 Tommy Bolt hit an amazing blind shot from the next county to close with a par and win one of many “Blast Furnace Opens” there. Hubert Green must have loved the sight of 18 after playing the last four holes at the ’77 Open under a death threat. He later joked the incident must have been spawned by some ex-girlfriend.
PGA National – Another candidate for prettiest fountain in major championship history and little else, unless you count the girl in the lime green bikini doing the scoreboard at the 1987 PGA Championship (her name was Danielle Crombe, for those of you scoring at home).
Others:
Most pundits like the finishers at Oak Hill and The Country Club, and dislike the closers at Valhalla and Medinah. Oak Hill and TCC have strong par-4s to close, Valhalla has that ugly par-5 with the winged green – ***rolls eyes*** – and as for Medinah, can some please go take this course out back and shoot it in the head? That’s the Chicago way of getting rid of things. Either that, or let Tom Fazio have a crack at it “re-perfecting” it. Either way, the quicker we kick this big, ugly dog no one likes to the curb, the better. If Medinah is so great, why is bland old Cog Hill suddenly nominated to replace it in the informal American major rotas?
British Opens/Open Championships
Interestingly, Open Championship courses are better known for their 17th holes rather than their finishers. “Many of them seem to look the same,” observed sports writer Art Spander. He may be right, as the formula – certain notable exceptions aside – seems to be long, amidst hip-high fescue, and peppered with a grillion bunkers. “We beat you up for 17 holes, then we just want to get you to the clubhouse for a drink,” quipped Irish writer Karl MacGinty.
Carnoustie Golf Links – Par-4, 490 yards – Some call it frightening, some call it overkill, but I call it dramatic. Barry Burn intersects the hole in three dangerous places. Deep bunkers and out-of-bounds guard the green as well. The last two major championships there have seen epic meltdowns by the leaders. A true par 4-1/2, if a designer gave your club that hole for a closer, there’d be a warrant out for his arrest faster than you could say triple-bogey, but for giving out the Claret Jug, there may be no stronger finishing hole on the Rota.
St. Andrews – Par-4, 350 yards – What needs to be said? The entire town forms part of the gallery come Open Championship week. This hole is essentially a par-3-1/2 with a birdie awaiting the bold well-struck drive and the Valley of Sin waiting to create more agony for a player without Costantino Rocca’s short game.
After that, Muirfield looks like Royal Lytham, which looks like Troon, which looks like Turnberry. Herbert Warren Wind praised Muirfield’s frankness and honesty” writing that there were no hidden bunkers, recondite burns, misleading shot requirements or capricious terrain, but was it possible he was describing Birkdale with that?
Nevertheless, Muirfield Golf Links probably offers the next best closing hol, despite one famous broadcaster confided to me that he saw three Opens championships there and still couldn’t remember details of the hole. Long and straight at 472 yards, bunkers flank the driving zone and the green.
It’s a toss-up between St. George’s and Troon next. Ian Fleming lovingly described the 18th at St. George’s in Goldfinger, so I’ll do you the literary favor of referring to that three-chapter masterpiece review of the course, but the 18th has a hump in the middle of the fairway which sheds balls. A complex of three cross-bunkers must be carried to the narrow entrance of the green.
Royal Liverpool is undoubtedly the worst of the bunch. I guess it took forty years to forget how lousy it was as an Open Championship host to begin with. Internal out-of bounds is a terrible hazard any time, but especially when a major championship is in the balance. [Author’s Note: Yes, I know, that hole played as number 2 in the 2006 British Open.]
The Masters
Augusta National G.C. – Par-4, 465 yards – There are two camps. Some say 18 is so overshadowed by Amen Corner and the dramatic par-5s, others say that recent Masters have shown the hole to be fraught with peril. It’s an awkward tee shot, fade through trees that must curve away from bunker through the fairway. Then it’s an uphill second.
The PLAYERS
TPC Sawgrass – Par-4, 447 yards – What? Sawgrass doesn’t host a major! Well it should. The course deserves it, Dye deserves it and public golf fans deserve it. It’s nice to occasionally see a major championship venue they can play, but how much better would it be to have a major championship venue every year – that they could play. Year in and year out this is one of the hardest holes on tour, if not the hardest. The edge of the hazard is curved and the backdrop is clean, so that the doctrine of deception is on full display here – players must be smart and pick the proper line. Play away from the water on the second, and shaggy mounds await.
The 18th at Oakland Hills is also a great finishing hole.
