Gavin Cooney
reports from Augusta National Golf Club
FRIDAY’S EARLY play is still unspooling within the front nine holes but already there are groups of patron hurrying away from the action, dragged down the slopes funnelling towards Rae’s Creek and the lowest point of the course by a force beyond just gravity.
The secondary pull force is Amen Corner, and specifically Augusta National’s 12th hole.
Even an A-List ensemble cast like the holes at Augusta National needs a lead actor, and around here it’s this 155-yard par three with water to the foreground and a colour palette of trees and shrubbery to the back. For all the tinkering that the club have done with their course, they have left the 12th alone: it is the only hole left untouched since 1965, and even that change was made to the teebox.
While the golfers’ favoured hole will usually be some yawning par-five which allows them flex some muscle, short par-threes are the magnets for the general fan: if a golf course is a sprawling, complex novel, then its short par-threes are a self-contained short story, in which the entire arc can be caught at a glimpse.
“This is it! This is the Masters!”, said one patron with a beatific sigh as he took his seat in the grandstand.
The early morning sun is casting long pine shadows across the adjacent 11th fairway and scorching only the left side of patrons’ faces, with the first golfers to actually play a shot still more than an hour away.
“What a view”, says another patron. “It’s great to see it without any golfers in the way” incants another true Augusta zealot.
Nobody is allowed their phones or their cameras on tournament days, but if they were, everyone would be descending upon this corner of the course as they would the Mona Lisa in Paris or Michelangelo’s David in Florence. The crowds instead flock to this hole out of a voyeuristic kind of intrigue.
Augusta National is sometimes nicknamed the Cathedral of Pines, and if so, then the short 12th hole wedged in its corner is the confession box to which the rest of us sneak to bear witness to the sins of others.
The Masters’ chief appeal is that it is the only major that returns to the same course every year, building familiarity for us and pressure for the golfers. And when it comes to the 12th hole, images of calamity and disaster are so readily accessible that the pressure can be intolerable.
“That’s an eight-iron and it’s crippled more people than polio”, said Gary Player this week.
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Asked what one change he would make to the course, Tom Watson replied, “I’d fill in the creek in front of number 12.”
McIlroy's shot into 12. Alamy Stock Photo
Alamy Stock Photo
For it’s in that creek that innumerable Masters dreams have been drowned, most infamous was Jordan Spieth, whose 2016 defence was ended when he went splash-splash in the water. Other ambitions have been ruthlessly dismantled. Gene Sarazen took an eight on the 12th in 1952 and walked off the course.
As Spieth would, Arnold Palmer took his Masters defence and a two-shot Sunday lead to the 12th in 1959 and made a triple-bogey. Tom Weiskopf took a 13 and then an eight in 1980. The first plank to break beneath Greg Norman in 1996 was, of course, the 12th, where he made double-bogey. Tiger Woods was the last man standing in 2019 after all of Brooks Koepka, Francesco Molinari and Tony Finau all went ker-plunk on 12th.
A patron over my shoulder is regaling his friend with the latest disaster, that of Asterisk Talley, who teed it up on 12 as the leader of the Augusta National Women’s Amateur only to chip her second ball over the green and into the creek on her way to a ruinous seven.
There hasn’t been a hole-in-one on 12 since 1988. So what is it it that makes this little hole so damn difficult?
It is partly the wind, which swirls unpredictably against the arcing wall of trees at the back of the green. The flag on the 11th green is sufficiently close to be tempting to read for clues, but it’s often a false flag operation. The 12th is its own ecosystem.
Wind aside, it’s a classic test of shot shape. Today’s pin is to the right of the green, and so similar to the traditional Sunday hole location. Attacking this pin is an act of madness: and so it best suits the fader who can gently peel the ball to the middle of the green. Cut it, however, and you’re going to be rolling back into the water. If you’re drawing the ball, then best not try get greedy and try to land the ball anywhere near the pin, or you’re likely getting wet.
But what truly makes this hole difficult is not the wind or the distance or the firmness of the green but the weight of expectation. It is instructive to hear so many patrons in the grandstand say they can’t make out what is happening on the green, their sightlines complicated by the shadows cast by the trees: everyone’s chief focus is not on the hole or a player’s score, but what characteristic disaster might be at hand. The crowds thronged here are a genteel sort of ambulance chasers.
Hence in addition to the usual generous applause for players, the crowd at the 12th are seized with an odd frisson, braced – if not hoping – for incipient disaster.
The first players through are Sungjae Im and Samuel Stevens. Sungjae dumps the ball in the front bunker before Stevens flies the ball over the back of the green and shoots his caddie a recriminating look. Sungaje gets up and down for par; Stevens makes bogey.
Tom McKibbin stumbles to the tee box at seven-over but safely finds the left side of the green and escapes with par. Mike Weir follows in the next group and shows all of his experience by aborting his practice swing to further study the wind, tossing grass in the air and eyes darting between the flags on 11 and 12 and then hits a gorgeous shot to the pin for the first birdie of the day. His playing partner is the amateur Mateo Pulcini, who overcooks his approach into the back bunker and becomes classically damned by history. Trying to avoid doing an Asterisk Talley and chip the ball into the water, he ends up tallying a triple bogey, pitching his shot from the sand into the, er, sand.
Zach Johnson yells carry at an insubordinate ball that hits the slope to the front-right of the green and slithers into the drink. His playing partner Nicolai Hojgaard wipes his shot right and is looking disconsolately at the ground before his ball does the inevitable.
Among the most famous moments at 12 has been Freddie Couples’ dicing with disaster, his shot on Sunday in 1992 somehow clinging to the slope and allowing him to go and win his first Masters title. Thirty-four years on, Couples learns one doesn’t tempt fate twice. His ball rolls into the water to a chorus of groans and a sad-trumpet “Sorry Freddie” from one solicitous patron.
“I was one-under for 9, 10, 11, and then hit an awful shot on 12 where I did it a long time ago”, said Couples after his round.
Justin Rose arrives off three-straight birdies but leaves with a bogey. His playing partner Brooks Koepka plays the textbook shot, flighting the ball to 11 feet right of the pin before rolling in for birdie.
Justin Thomas reads the direction of the 12th flag, matches it to the 11th flag, and looks back again to find the 12th flag has suddenly fallen limp. The mystery abides. Thomas leaves his shot in the front bunker but gets up and down.
Robert MacIntyre bounds to the tee minutes ahead of his playing partners. He’s seven-over and evidently eager to get the hell out of here. First Scottie Scheffler arrives to the loudest cheers of the day, and therefore the queasiest pre-shot hush of the day. Scheffler takes a couple of glances at the flag on 11 and then cuts the ball gently against the wind and finds safe harbour to the left of the flag. The 12th is better suited to a left-hander and so MacIntyre sweeps one of the shots of the day to within five feet of the pin, knocking in a birdie putt for some brief relief. Gary Woodland flies the green and wrings his hands in anger.
Nicolas Echavarria hits his approach and enters manic negotiation with his ball. GoGoGoGoStayStayStayStayStayStay…NoNoNo. Groans from the crowd and a triple on the card.
Shane Lowry is orienteering himself calmly around the course and so aims well left of the flag and safely carries the bunker to two putt for a trouble-averting par. Nick Taylor sticks the shot of the day to a couple of feet before Patrick Reed outdoes him by sweeping a draw to birdie range and cut Rory McIlroy’s lead to one.
Patrick Reed hitting into 12. Alamy Stock Photo
Alamy Stock Photo
McIlroy arrives around half an hour later to the largest crowds of the day, thronged around, waiting for drama. In keeping with Augusta National’s new-found respect for McIlroy, the wind is as friendly as it has been all day, puffing wheezily at his back. Teenage amateur Mason Howell attacks the pin and sees the ball bounce skip and almost drop in the hole. Cameron Young second-thinks his club choice before finding the back of the green. McIlroy then confidently sticks the ball a few feet from the flag and bounces off and across the Hogan bridge. The masses peer across the creek to see McIlroy hunch over his club, pop up, and then stoop to collect his ball from the hole.
With that the crowds disperse, and on my way back to the media centre I pass an underworked volunteer sitting in a chair by the 17th fairway reading The Age of Anxiety and I resist the urge to tell him that they’ve stationed him at the wrong hole.
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'It's crippled more people than polio' - A day at the Masters' famous, treacherous 12th hole
FRIDAY’S EARLY play is still unspooling within the front nine holes but already there are groups of patron hurrying away from the action, dragged down the slopes funnelling towards Rae’s Creek and the lowest point of the course by a force beyond just gravity.
The secondary pull force is Amen Corner, and specifically Augusta National’s 12th hole.
Even an A-List ensemble cast like the holes at Augusta National needs a lead actor, and around here it’s this 155-yard par three with water to the foreground and a colour palette of trees and shrubbery to the back. For all the tinkering that the club have done with their course, they have left the 12th alone: it is the only hole left untouched since 1965, and even that change was made to the teebox.
While the golfers’ favoured hole will usually be some yawning par-five which allows them flex some muscle, short par-threes are the magnets for the general fan: if a golf course is a sprawling, complex novel, then its short par-threes are a self-contained short story, in which the entire arc can be caught at a glimpse.
“This is it! This is the Masters!”, said one patron with a beatific sigh as he took his seat in the grandstand.
The early morning sun is casting long pine shadows across the adjacent 11th fairway and scorching only the left side of patrons’ faces, with the first golfers to actually play a shot still more than an hour away.
“What a view”, says another patron. “It’s great to see it without any golfers in the way” incants another true Augusta zealot.
Nobody is allowed their phones or their cameras on tournament days, but if they were, everyone would be descending upon this corner of the course as they would the Mona Lisa in Paris or Michelangelo’s David in Florence. The crowds instead flock to this hole out of a voyeuristic kind of intrigue.
Augusta National is sometimes nicknamed the Cathedral of Pines, and if so, then the short 12th hole wedged in its corner is the confession box to which the rest of us sneak to bear witness to the sins of others.
The Masters’ chief appeal is that it is the only major that returns to the same course every year, building familiarity for us and pressure for the golfers. And when it comes to the 12th hole, images of calamity and disaster are so readily accessible that the pressure can be intolerable.
“That’s an eight-iron and it’s crippled more people than polio”, said Gary Player this week.
Asked what one change he would make to the course, Tom Watson replied, “I’d fill in the creek in front of number 12.”
For it’s in that creek that innumerable Masters dreams have been drowned, most infamous was Jordan Spieth, whose 2016 defence was ended when he went splash-splash in the water. Other ambitions have been ruthlessly dismantled. Gene Sarazen took an eight on the 12th in 1952 and walked off the course.
As Spieth would, Arnold Palmer took his Masters defence and a two-shot Sunday lead to the 12th in 1959 and made a triple-bogey. Tom Weiskopf took a 13 and then an eight in 1980. The first plank to break beneath Greg Norman in 1996 was, of course, the 12th, where he made double-bogey. Tiger Woods was the last man standing in 2019 after all of Brooks Koepka, Francesco Molinari and Tony Finau all went ker-plunk on 12th.
A patron over my shoulder is regaling his friend with the latest disaster, that of Asterisk Talley, who teed it up on 12 as the leader of the Augusta National Women’s Amateur only to chip her second ball over the green and into the creek on her way to a ruinous seven.
There hasn’t been a hole-in-one on 12 since 1988. So what is it it that makes this little hole so damn difficult?
It is partly the wind, which swirls unpredictably against the arcing wall of trees at the back of the green. The flag on the 11th green is sufficiently close to be tempting to read for clues, but it’s often a false flag operation. The 12th is its own ecosystem.
Wind aside, it’s a classic test of shot shape. Today’s pin is to the right of the green, and so similar to the traditional Sunday hole location. Attacking this pin is an act of madness: and so it best suits the fader who can gently peel the ball to the middle of the green. Cut it, however, and you’re going to be rolling back into the water. If you’re drawing the ball, then best not try get greedy and try to land the ball anywhere near the pin, or you’re likely getting wet.
But what truly makes this hole difficult is not the wind or the distance or the firmness of the green but the weight of expectation. It is instructive to hear so many patrons in the grandstand say they can’t make out what is happening on the green, their sightlines complicated by the shadows cast by the trees: everyone’s chief focus is not on the hole or a player’s score, but what characteristic disaster might be at hand. The crowds thronged here are a genteel sort of ambulance chasers.
Hence in addition to the usual generous applause for players, the crowd at the 12th are seized with an odd frisson, braced – if not hoping – for incipient disaster.
The first players through are Sungjae Im and Samuel Stevens. Sungjae dumps the ball in the front bunker before Stevens flies the ball over the back of the green and shoots his caddie a recriminating look. Sungaje gets up and down for par; Stevens makes bogey.
Tom McKibbin stumbles to the tee box at seven-over but safely finds the left side of the green and escapes with par. Mike Weir follows in the next group and shows all of his experience by aborting his practice swing to further study the wind, tossing grass in the air and eyes darting between the flags on 11 and 12 and then hits a gorgeous shot to the pin for the first birdie of the day. His playing partner is the amateur Mateo Pulcini, who overcooks his approach into the back bunker and becomes classically damned by history. Trying to avoid doing an Asterisk Talley and chip the ball into the water, he ends up tallying a triple bogey, pitching his shot from the sand into the, er, sand.
Zach Johnson yells carry at an insubordinate ball that hits the slope to the front-right of the green and slithers into the drink. His playing partner Nicolai Hojgaard wipes his shot right and is looking disconsolately at the ground before his ball does the inevitable.
Among the most famous moments at 12 has been Freddie Couples’ dicing with disaster, his shot on Sunday in 1992 somehow clinging to the slope and allowing him to go and win his first Masters title. Thirty-four years on, Couples learns one doesn’t tempt fate twice. His ball rolls into the water to a chorus of groans and a sad-trumpet “Sorry Freddie” from one solicitous patron.
“I was one-under for 9, 10, 11, and then hit an awful shot on 12 where I did it a long time ago”, said Couples after his round.
Justin Rose arrives off three-straight birdies but leaves with a bogey. His playing partner Brooks Koepka plays the textbook shot, flighting the ball to 11 feet right of the pin before rolling in for birdie.
Justin Thomas reads the direction of the 12th flag, matches it to the 11th flag, and looks back again to find the 12th flag has suddenly fallen limp. The mystery abides. Thomas leaves his shot in the front bunker but gets up and down.
Robert MacIntyre bounds to the tee minutes ahead of his playing partners. He’s seven-over and evidently eager to get the hell out of here. First Scottie Scheffler arrives to the loudest cheers of the day, and therefore the queasiest pre-shot hush of the day. Scheffler takes a couple of glances at the flag on 11 and then cuts the ball gently against the wind and finds safe harbour to the left of the flag. The 12th is better suited to a left-hander and so MacIntyre sweeps one of the shots of the day to within five feet of the pin, knocking in a birdie putt for some brief relief. Gary Woodland flies the green and wrings his hands in anger.
Nicolas Echavarria hits his approach and enters manic negotiation with his ball. GoGoGoGoStayStayStayStayStayStay…NoNoNo. Groans from the crowd and a triple on the card.
Shane Lowry is orienteering himself calmly around the course and so aims well left of the flag and safely carries the bunker to two putt for a trouble-averting par. Nick Taylor sticks the shot of the day to a couple of feet before Patrick Reed outdoes him by sweeping a draw to birdie range and cut Rory McIlroy’s lead to one.
McIlroy arrives around half an hour later to the largest crowds of the day, thronged around, waiting for drama. In keeping with Augusta National’s new-found respect for McIlroy, the wind is as friendly as it has been all day, puffing wheezily at his back. Teenage amateur Mason Howell attacks the pin and sees the ball bounce skip and almost drop in the hole. Cameron Young second-thinks his club choice before finding the back of the green. McIlroy then confidently sticks the ball a few feet from the flag and bounces off and across the Hogan bridge. The masses peer across the creek to see McIlroy hunch over his club, pop up, and then stoop to collect his ball from the hole.
With that the crowds disperse, and on my way back to the media centre I pass an underworked volunteer sitting in a chair by the 17th fairway reading The Age of Anxiety and I resist the urge to tell him that they’ve stationed him at the wrong hole.
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