Chambers Bay Hole 14

[Anthony Gray]

  521  Par 4    HDCP 6

  Long carry to the fairway. Leven like tee shot. 280 carry to the fairway from the back. Centerline bunker effects the tee shot. Bottle? Approach can be bounced in. Waste bunkers guard the left. Contours around the green both aid and punish the miss.

 

 

 

   

 

 

   Back toward the tee.

 

 

 

 

  Anthony

[Sean Leary]

Fun tee shot and really good hole.If you can carry the ball far enough going left of the bunker gets you a big kick left. If you go right of the bunker, its a LONG way home.

[Richard Choi]

Sorry Anthony, your pictures are not doing this dramatic hole any justice...



One of the very best hole on this course. The tee shot is a dramatic as they come (as you can see from the photo). A classic reward/risk hole where you decide how much distance you want to chop off. If you fall short, the traps are vast and soft, with a blind shot to the green and even bailout area to boot. Ideally, you want a nice draw off the tee that lands just short and left of the large center target bunker (about 200 to 250 yard carry) so that you can pickup 30 or 40 extra yards off the sidehill, which will leave you with a short iron into the green.

If you miss, either you are on the right of the bunker which is over 200 yards from the pin, or in the bunker, which is deep and nasty and the only option is to lay up.

There is a front right mound in front of the green that helps you feed the ball to the center without challenging the bunkers that almost surrounds the green on the left side. The back of the green falls off and you don't want to leave it there.

Just a fun fun hole.

[Rob Rigg]

My favorite hole on the course - to echo what has been said - fun, fun, fun!

In three plays I have executed properly once - big draw off the center line bunker - and failed twice - too much draw/hook and in the waste area. I think I ended up with par everytime though If you are in the waste area and take your medicine it is possible to recover. The green, from recollection, is one of the easiest on the course to hole a long putt.

14 is about the drive though - the vista from the tee is breathtaking, and having the bunker as an aiming point is fantastic.

You will probably be left with one of three outcomes - 1) short iron after hitting a nice draw off the bunker, 2) long iron or hybrid if you hit over the bunker and stay "up top", 3) a mid-iron punch shot to the green from the waste area, or a punch out to where you ball would have ended up in scenario 1.

Watching a well hit tee ball hang in the air as it draws off the bunker really is fantastic - I would sit there all day during the Am and Open.

[Garland Bayley]

Don't those archies know better than to put that big a bunker on the slice side of a southpaw? 

[Tom Yost]

A couple more pics that I think illustrate the features of the hole:

Tee shot to a diagonal fairway.  The bailout to the right of the bunker is easy to achieve, but leaves a long shot to the green.  The landing area left of the bunker is generous but requires a solid shot. Bold but doable if the right tees are chosen and the wind is not significantly into your face.



This is the second shot one faces if the safer bailout to the right is chosen. Maybe 180/190 from here.  Note the ridge coming down from the dune on the right in front of the green.  This adds an element of interest as it tends to repel any shot short and right and makes a right front pin very tricky to get close to.


Great hole, one of my favorites!

[Anthony Gray]

  So is it a Bottle Hole?

  Anthont

[Peter_Herreid]

OK, your helpful playing hint here...

Tom's 2nd photo really highlights the brilliance of this green complex (which makes the hole), yet it is the tee shot that "sells the calendars"...

This green complex is really "made" by the interplay between the continuation of the large dune high right of the green down to the front right of the green and the even more subtle diagonal "fold" in the fairway 20-25 yds short of that prominent slope.

A shot with any significant loft that hits at the bottom of that "valley" or on the upslope of the larger dune will NOT reliably kick down onto the green.  Even lower trajectory shots can bite up in that bowl, leaving an incredibly challenging chip, pitch or long putt up and over the slope down onto the green.

This is complicated by the back half of the green falling away to the back, from which recoveries are not so easy..

A low running shot almost needs to hit in front of the fairway fold and run hot to get to the green--it also works to hit on the back side of the fairway fold and shoot forward onto the green.  A shot hitting the back of the larger slope will almost always kick long and right...

This is without question a hole where the bold line of the tee is dramatically rewarded, mostly because a more lofted club can be played into the green.  Any tee shot to the right fairway makes par a very, very good result...

The tee shot gets the heart racing, but the action really heats up around the green...

And to answer the inevitable, on those rare occasions when we get the unexpected zephyr here, it typically will be against and from left-right, furthering the challenge of smoking one down the left side fairway...

BTW, there is a reasonable chance that the centerline fairway bunker may look very different by August, but I haven't been out there in the last weeks, so I can't confirm that...

[Tom Yost]

Sometimes having a huge drive that effortlessly covers the waste area and finds the fat, flat area left of the bunker leaving only an soft 8i into the green...  does not always pay dividends.   

[Scott_Burroughs]

A view across the course from the tee:


A view down #4 & #5 from the tee:


Approach from behind the bunker:

[Mike Hendren]

Add this hole to the 9th at Pacific Dunes and 17th at St. Andrews as my all time favorite tee shots. 

Bogey

[Richard Choi]

Tom, you suck.