Number 11 at Augusta

[Link Walsh]

I know a lot of people have voiced their concerns about the changes to number 11 over the past few years.  My question is this: 

What if this was a newly designed hole and we had no preconceived notions about what the hole used to look like? 

I've included (hopefully) a few pictures of the hole from behind the tee as well as an overhead image of the hole.



Let's examine the hole as it is now. 

1)  It's a long par 4- nothing wrong with that.   

2)  The tee shot is semi-blind over a slight saddle, but it gives you enough of a view to know that the hole bends to the right.  I know the "modern golfer" (and maybe even tour pro) doesn't like the blind or semi-blind tee shot, but who cares?  The tee shot fits the land (even if some dirt was moved around).         

3) The proper play off the tee is a fade into a fairway that falls to the left.  Now, I'm no architect, but that to me is a good use of the terrain.  It creates doubt in the golfer's mind off the tee in that the fear of going left leads even the best pros to spray it to the right.

4)  That sprayed tee shot to the right is now actually punished instead of giving the players a more open (albeit longer) view into the green.

5)  The left to right nature of the ideal tee shot breaks up the long run of holes where right to left tee shots are favored-  #9 & 10 before and #13 and 14 after.

6)  After the left to right tee shot, the green favors a right to left approach- a favorite ploy of many architects like Pete Dye among others.



Selfishly, I don't like all the trees on the right side because it moves the fans further away from the hole.  But, let's face it- they made the hole longer and tougher for a reason.  The pros are just too long and straight.


One more thing- Brandel Chamblee in his Golf Magazine article and many others have complained that all the changes made to the course over the years have removed much of the original "vision" of Jones and Mackenzie.  But we forget that the original #11 did dogleg left to right.  So by changing the tee angle and adding the trees to the right, hasn't the club brought #11 more closely back to it's original intent (and yes, I know the pond wasn't always there...)?     

     
I just think we need to look at this hole with a fresh pair of eyes.  If #11 were plopped down onto newly built course, it would generate all sorts of praise.  But because we have preconceived notions, the tendency is to complain.     

[Greg Chambers]

I like the hole.  I say lower the member tee a few feet, making the tee shot even more blind from that teeing area.  Then put a bunker in that little knob short right of the green so pros are thinking about it if playing from the up tee.  Play both sets of tees at some point during the week.  Even if played as a short par 4, with the pin in the right spot, par is still defended at the green.

[V. Kmetz]

LW,

I've never agreed with a GCA post so throughly.  

I will add when it comes to a revered course where the elites convene, one that we all know as a paradigm of a certain quality, we have a hard time distinguishing between changes meant for all the course's players and ones made for those annual elite competitions.

If I were somehow a frequent player of Augusta, the only thing I would rue about 11's changes is that the old main tee (which quickly became just the member's regular white tee) was obliterated with the last group of tree plantings  .  It had hung on for many years well after the Masters tee was placed in that corridor left of the 10th green.  Now no one gets that experience.

I was also reading that from 1932 onward for several years there was a pot bunker hidden from the tee in the middle of the fairway and was removed after Bobby Jones father, the colonel drove into it on the very first round played on the course...it took the colonel more than a few years to get his way or for his son to see the light.

cheers

vk

[Matt_Ward]

Link:

The addition of the trees on the right is unnecssary and the encroachment of the "second cut" pushed player away from the ideal right side to the more problematic left side.

The Hootie solution was unnecessary. Adding yardage to the hole was fine -- but the width element should have been kept as is.

The approach shot to the hole has always been a real terror - the idea that the hole had to be "helped" because Hootie and the gang there were incensed that a few players hit short irons into the hole was truly inane.

Link, you ask about a pair of fresh eyes looking at the hole -- the problem is that the people who "fixex" the hole were the ones wearing Coke bottle type glasses in the first place.

[Link Walsh]

Matt,

See, you're looking at it the wrong way.  Imagine you never knew how wide the corridor really was and tell me that this just isn't a well designed hole that challenges players to hit two good shots.  Before, you could just bomb it down there anywhere.  Plus, it rewarded the player who hit a draw so they could sling it off that hill and get more distance.  So that made 5 tee shots in a row where a draw was rewarded.   

[David_Elvins]

Link,

The way I see it, Augusta was all about width and giving players the choice of whether to play to the left side, right side or centre of the fairway, depending on the players chosen strategy for the days pin posiiton.  

The 11th hole now has less  width.  Therefor it is a worse hole.  

Pretty simple in my mind.  

Intersting that you mention the player who drives right now being punished.  As far as I know, Augusta was not traditionally about punishing players.  

Don't forget that traditionally, fairway width is an important part of not only Augusta but alot of the other courses that have been ranked amongst the world's top 10 for the past 80 years including Pine Valley, Royal Melbourne, St Andrews, and Cypress Point. 

[Link Walsh]

But what's wrong with punishing a bad tee shot?  At 13, players are punished for going left with a hazard.  And they are punished for going right by being in the pines and having to lay up.

I agree that Augusta has made many changes to narrow their playing corridors.  But let's be honest.  Surrounding the fairways with 1/2 inch rough isn't THAT big of a deal.  In fact, the 2nd cut even keeps some drives out of the trees. 

I would argue that there is still plenty of room in most all of the fairways, especially considering how much technology has helped lead to straighter and longer drives.  Heck, I hit driver as much as I can nowadays because it's the straightest long club in my bag (and for years I didn't even carry a driver because I couldn't hit it high and straight enough).  It's too easy for the pros to hit it long and straight. 

Augusta still has wider fairways than the U.S. Open, the PGA, and I would argue most of the venues for the British Open as well.  And with basically no rough! 

We have to throw our preconceived notions about what the course used to be because technology and better athletes have changed the game so much. 

I was watching some of the Masters Classic films on ESPN the other day.  The course was becoming no more than a pitch and putt course for many of the players in the late 90s (and it would be worse today).  And playing angles into greens don't matter much when the pros are hitting wedges all the time.

Sorry, I'm getting off track.  The original premise of my post is just that, if 11 were designed today as it stands, people would be talking about how it's just a good, tough golf hole and not about how it used to be. 

 

[Matthew Rose]

I personally would like to see it maybe 10-15 yards shorter, to encourage more aggressive play. I'd like to see less bailouts and maybe a few more attempts at the pin, or at least the middle of the green. I'm seeing too many guys out in Larry Mize territory.

Perhaps the recovery from the right could be made more difficult, to encourage less players to bail out.

These are just nit-picks though.... I still think its a very good hole.

7 and to a lesser extent 1 and 17 are the three I really have the most problem with.

[Mark Bourgeois]

Link

There's nothing wrong with punishing a poor tee shot, but narrowing the hole presents a Penal School punishment, whereas width, presented as an enabler of angles with respect to green complex elements such as the water, hollows/bumps, and hole location, presents punishments far subtler and of the Strategic or Heroic schools.

Forgeting the history of the tournament for a moment, I prefer strategic designs, so I would prefer the 11th be strategic / heroic rather than penal. I want to see true recoveries, not pitch outs and clubs breaking on pine tree trunks.

Remembering the history of the tournament, isn't the idea to give the pros plenty of rope to hang themselves, to commingle the heroic with the foolish and balance those two on a knife's edge, not to dictate a line or play?

Mark

[Chip Gaskins]

The should just put the center line pot bunker back in...

[Matt Kardash]

Basically, you gotta think about the hole in 2 ways. I would say the hole today is a better hole for the professional golfer, but probably a worse hole for the member. Designing for the everyday golder and for the pro are two completely different things. This is an example of a hole that was re-designed for the pro golfer. There is nothing necessarily wrong with that, it just is what it is.

[Anthony Gray]

  Link,

  Great thread. We need more like this. The pond makes the hole. The green slope toward it so even a ball landind on the green can funnel inti it. Many misses to to left. Without the pond it is over half a stroke easier.

  Anthony