Flossmoor CC, here in suburban Chicago, was recently the subject of a celebrated renovation by Ray Hearn. The course was built in 1899 and it had fallen prey to all of the pitfalls of an older club: shrunken green pads, horizontal tree growth infringing on fairway lines and lines of flight, bunker loss and bunker alterations, etc. But one of the primary reasons that the course really needed some renovation is that it had one hole that was a bit of a sore spot. Some members ardently defended the hole, but others openly derided it. Flossmoor began to be defined by the hole, since people who played it only occasionally usually remembered that hole primarily.
Here's the hole: A 120 yard par-three from an elevated tee to a lower green fronted by a big bunker. The line of flight to the hole was amazingly narrow, between a chute of 200 year-old oak trees. The green was banked right to left at an angle of something like 8%. It was a "lucky birdie", easy bogey hole if ever I saw one. In many ways, it became the "signature" hole of the golf course to casual observers, which was most unfortunate, because the rest of the holes were quite good, and some were simply brilliant.
So that hole got eliminated and replaced by another short hole, about the same distance, in a bit of a meadow, which was created by the felling of at least 100 old oaks. It's sort of underwhelming, in many respects, and it is still arguably the "worst" or the most controversial or perhaps the most boring hole on the course.