My particular bugaboo is #13 at Spanish Bay, the site of more than one emotional trauma in my personal golfing history. It seems so innocuous, especially since the strong point of my game are the short irons - just a simple 125 yard pitch across a ravine to a hillside shelf.
The target is not really tiny relative to the yardage - and the left front of the green, a good bail-out spot - is only about 115 from the tee. To hit it in the back bunker, you've got to overcook the shot by a wide margin and the lower sand pits nudged into the hillside are only in play for a complete whiff 20 yards right of the target.
Yes, there is quite a bit of wind from right to left (or quartering against) and the hourglass green is set at a 45 degree angle, but any reasonably decent swing finds the putting surface and at worse a 35 foot lag putt.
So why have I made everything on this hole from 2 to 11?
The worst part is that my score on this little f*cker is invariably disproportionate to how I stand walking off the 12th green. The 11 - that is right, my eightuplet (jeez, is that even a word?) - occurred after rolling in a birdie on 12 to go two-under in a tournament.
It is a simple matter to butcher the hole, just change your mind in the middle of the backswing with the pin tucked back right, climb down into the ravine to play a recovery, have the ball roll back to your feet twice, hit it in the back bunker, catch it one tick thin coming back towards the pin, make your way down the ravine again, leave the next one short in the front bunker - under the lip - blast out, fall over backwards, try to wipe the sand out of your butt crack, skull it over the green and ask the cart tart to mix up a triple Bloody Mary.
Now, standing six over par on the 14th tee - with a three club wind racing off the ocean right in your chops - it is important to finish off the experience with a apres-puke duck slice onto Highway 68, thereby turning a 72 into an 82.
But let me stand on the 13th tee eight over par and I guarantee even a careless lunge at the ball will end up a foot away for a tap-in deuce - thereby proving again my long-held observation regarding the perversity of the universe.