Mike:
I have never played the hole myself, but I have yet to see anyone in response to your question define the strategic challenges of the hole. It's certainly a CHALLENGING finishing hole, but that's something else again. What's the strategy to which your refer?
Tom,
I'll take a crack at it. I'm certainly not a tour pro but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last weekend and have a beard to pull.
Let me first throw up the hole diagram for reference;
For the average golfer playing from the 417 or less yard tees, the drive is pretty straightforward although as some mentioned, it's a narrowing as you go proposition and drives longer than 260 or so risk cascading down into the gorge. Given the windy site, the firm conditions, and the downhill slope in the landing area that's not as big a drive as it sounds so the prudent play is likely to step back to a 3-wood, but not many of us ever make that smart decision. Assuming one has placed the tee ball properly the approach is merely a question of how much to bite off or whether to bail right.
The tour player has a bit of a different proposition from the tee. The championship tees are placed well over on the left which changes the angle of attack for the drive and becomes a bite-off-as-much-as-you-dare proposition, again knowing that a drive down the right fairway running slightly over 300 yards risks going down the creek. That's one of the reasons that makes Dustin Johnson's decision to take driver down the right side there so perplexing. One could also try the 300 yard carry down the left side to take the creek out of play but that leaves a very poor angle of approach with limited visibility to the green, particularly to the front-left pin utilized during the final round. By contrast, the upper right side fairway offers a good view down to the green and even a possibility of using the right fairway down near the green to run the ball in from that side.
For both levels of player, it's when the drive isn't well placed that the fun begins, as we saw in the last PGA championship. Do you risk going for the green from an iffy sidehill/downhill lie in the rough or sand? We saw that to be a pretty low-percentage success rate, although it's still very tempting as the distance is very achievable. Do you lay up down the left hand fairway to take all the trouble out of play, again leaving a poor angle for the third? Do you try to bail out to the right side of fairway, which depending on the hole location may leave a third to an inaccessible hole location, such as the back right corner?
With a major title on the line, I think the hole plays excellently for top players who are indeed challenged but also need to think straight as they weigh these options. These guys have the ability to pull off any of the challenging shots i just described yet not all the time as witnessed in the last PGA Championship.
Here's the hole from behind for perspective, that hopefully illustrates the various options. In my opinion, the hole forces decisions to be made and offers multiple choices in terms of both distance and direction on both the drive and approach shots. Thanks again to Joe Bausch for the photos.
