How can Kavanaugh forget!!!
Pin is front left, the toughest pin on the course I think. Huge back to front slope(think Eden). John does aim for the bunker hoping for a draw with a 6 iron and dead blocks it right of the green about 2/3 of the way thru it's depth. Alex, his caddie says he can try a huge flop shot that needs to land just over the bunker in the center of the green, which is between him and the hole, and let the ball just trickle down the big slope 20 ft to the hole or just play to the fringe short of the green and try to make a 20 ft uphill putt. Alex recommends the safe route to avoid making double if he doesn't pull off the flopasaurus. John looks at me with mischief in his eye and says "Well, I've gotta try the shot over the bunker. When else I'm I going to be able to play this shot." He nips it just right with a big swing, lands it in the collar just over the bunker with spin, ball takes one bounce forward and then almost stops, it then starts to barely roll down the hill, picks up speed a little until it runs out of gumption and ends up a foot from the cup.
I look forward to describing again the first time he played 10.
Enjoying this John.
One note re 5 - The backside of the little Manmade Alps right of the green was always cut as fairway once you cleared the horseshoe at the top of the hill, enabling the ball to bound onto the green with a fairway wood or long iron. It actually provided for a 2 club shorter route if you challenged the hill successfully. Another of the many cool alternate route ideas that Thomas put all over Riviera.
This hole lies dormant with the tees 30yards forward from their original placement, and the equipment of today. The tee complex got changed in the early 80s to soften the descent from the 4th green to the back 5th tee as there was a fear of litigation if someone fell down the very steep hill, which happened on #1 a year earlier. LAAC made the decision to eliminate their exposure to those kinds of lawsuits by "fixing" the problem and just moving up the tees and creating these huge Ted Robinson designed freeway tees with almost no descent from the 4th green. The original back tee was about 10 yards behind and below the very pushed up green. Kind of benched into it. The tee shot on 5 would fly into the Manmade hill in the fairway that acted as a governor for distance leaving you a 215 yard second shot. If you stand on the top of that hill you will see that these details still exist today, but given the 3rd generation of tees(the Robinson tees were replaced and an attempt to find the old tee missed it's mark), equipment, and the long grass on the back side of the greenside hill, this wonderful hole does not play as intended. It's quite a tribute to Thomas and Bell that still, it's a cool hole.