Hole O'Cross (In) #13

[Jeff Fortson]

Hole O' Cross #13 St. Andrews (Old)

Is this hole the most overlooked of the entire 18?  I say, yes.

In six rounds on the Old Course, I have never made better than 5.  The hole is under 400 yards in length and the Coffin bunkers are easily carried with no head wind, yet par eludes me still.  Through conversations with others I have noticed a trend that many don't play this hole well and even more amazing, THEY DON'T EVEN REALIZE IT!  Not until I bring it out of them do they finally say, "Hey, you know what?  You're right.  That hole does seem to be quietly tough."  

Because you are making the transition from 12 to 14, two of the more visually and strategically pleasing holes on the course, I think this hole gets overlooked in a big way.  I forget which Open it was but I think Trevino was near the lead in the final round and hit to the 5th flag on accident and it cost him the Championship.  

I find the approach to be so hard to gage that I usually just try to get it anywhere on the putting surface.  However, I have hit it in the gorse right 3 out of the 6 times off the tee so maybe it's the blind tee shot that really gets me.

Could someone please try to straighten me out and tell me how to play this hole.

Does anyone else here agree with me about #13 being a silent assassin and totally overlooked?

Jeff F.

[Mike_Cirba]

Jeff;

The 13th is the Bermuda Triangle of the golf world.  

See Payne Stewart's travails during the 1990? Open when he was getting close to the lead and found the coffins from the tee.

How to play this hole?  That would take a lifetime of study, I suspect.

Frankly, I'm surprised that Tom Paul isn't still out there, walking it from every angle, seeing to understand the inexplicable.    

[Tommy_Naccarato]

Jeff and I were talking about this one yesterday, so we sort of got a head start!

I can't think of a more intriguing golf hole that just had my number the four times I played it, muliplied by the umpteen times I studied it.  A huge wide fairway to hit to (so you know the hole sucks.) and somewhere out there you have to put it, to avoid a blind shot or misdirection of where you think the green is and actually isn't. Fom about 250 out, the hole get really interesting on the right side, and you are even more in a cloud, or, as you Mike have properly pronounced it, The Bermuda Triangle. It's as if there is almost no way out, you get turned around and you start to aim for areas that you think is the right way to get out of their and to the green. Only, your completely fooled.

It's one of the greatest feelings I have eve had on a golf course, and it took the wind out of my sails.

[Robert "Cliff" Stanfield]

This hole is a brain teaser.  I often wondered if the hole was to be played w/ long iron toward the coffins...so to give you a view to the green and then another long iron....hoping to clear the left green side hazards....although  I am trying to remember if you have a view to the green from +/-200 yards out?

I always tried to play it to the 6th fwy over the coffins....maybe the way it was played originally into that green???  Or maybe the massive amounts of the gorse on the right hand side has pushed the fwy more left???  Maybe the hole at one time was a dogleg left???  Playing toward the out-of-bounds wall and back into the green...explaining some of the green shape?  Because-these (6&13) fwy's seem so pinched together???

[THuckaby2]

GREAT call, Jeff!

In my two playings a few months ago, I too came to be really intrigued by this hole and I too wondered if it were overlooked.  I really think it might be the toughest hole on the course, although 17 might hold it off in that respect.

In any case, I've given this a lot of thought - more than just about any other golf hole - and I think that really in the end it doesn't matter where you put your drive, you're going to have a damn hard 2nd regardless.

Does going left over the coffins would give a better angle?  I'm not sure... you have more gorse to carry and less green to work with from that side, counter to what you might think!  But at least you're not blind from over there... But it lengthens the shot so much....

Hitting a drive as hard as you can up the right-center, so it ends up as close to base of the shelf as you dare, leaves a totally blind shot, but a short one... with really a better angle, I think - less gorse to clear, more room to bounce up... but being so blind, it takes quite a leap of faith the play the shot, and if the pin is left, the bounce up advantage is negated...

In any case, to any pin other than something back - which is never gonna happen given the presence of #3 - it's going to be very tough to get close, just because any shot from any angle won't hit and hold.

Damn this is a tough hole to figure out... and a tough one to play... that makes it GREAT in my book.

Damn well might be my favorite hole on the course.  But that's so hard to say because so many others jump up that are just as intriguing/famous/fun...  

TH

[MikeMcCartin]

I had the pleasure of studying abroad in St. Andrews for a year and playing the Old Course many times with many players of varying abilities.  After reading this thread and thinking about my experience playing the 13th, I have to agree with you that the hole does provide a difficult, and overlooked, challenge.
I won't try to tackle the question of how to play the thirteenth in any general form, I can only speak of my own strategies for attacking the hole:
When the wind is calm or behind, I would aim over the last coffin bunker in the hope of placing my ball just to the left of the ridge which angles in from the gorse on the right.  The best case scenario, where I hit the ball as planned, would leave me with a flat lie and relatively open view of the green.  And as long as I did not hit it too far (a three wood was sometimes necessary with a strong tailwind), a mishit either right or left would leave me with a blind, but reasonable second shot due to the relatively short length of the shot.
With the wind in my face, I would take my tee shot left of the coffins.  The ground on the left of the bunkers is elevated slightly above the right providing a better view of the green's surface--something I found particularly helpful when hitting a long iron or fairway wood into the green.  
The real problem that I had when playing the thirteenth was getting my approach near the hole.  Whether it was the blind approach or the length of shot into the green, getting the right combination of distance and direction proved very difficult.  The elevated nature of the green (which has slightly raised front edge in addition) makes judging hole position difficult even when you have a pin sheet.  Combine the difficulty in getting the ball close with a green that has more slope (in the form of smaller rolls as opposed to the larger green features of the two holes it is sandwiched between) than is normally acknowledged and you have a hole where it is a challenge to get down in two consistently.  
The challenge of the thirteenth is especially fitting in that it provides a different test of shotmaking from the short run-up approaches found at 12 and 14.
Overall, a great, if underappreciated, hole.  I miss being there to take on its problems.

[THuckaby2]

Thank you very much for that assessment, Mike.  13 sure is one tough nut to crack.  I just want to know how the heck one can get an approach close, no matter where it comes from... Must be damn fun playing it many times trying to find out.

TH

[Tommy_Naccarato]

Going through my books on the Old Course, I have found minimal, almost non-discussion on the 13th. Underated? How about just plain neglected!

I think this hole, even with todays' equipment still is a monster. Maybe I'm wrong, because I don't pay attention to the pro game (or Matt Ward's) but MacKenzie didn't put a single thing about the 13th in Spirit of St. Andrews, or at least what I haven't found. Tom Jarrett's, St. Andrews Golf Links-The First 600 Years only mentions a few things about  a few of the bunkers--Lion's Mouth and the other unnamed deep trench just over the of the blinding rise going right.Keith Mackie's Golf at St. Andrews adds three paragraphs that describes a one-dimensional way to play the hole, and is of very little help also.

But I then went to Desmond Muirhead's book with Tip Anderson. (I've eliminated the Desmond text to ease Tom Doak's pain. )

Now we start the course.

This thirteenth is one of the hardest holes and yecan play it two ways, depending onwhere the pin is on the green. Today the pin is in the middle, so ye can hit it up the right side, short of the dividing ridge of rough and anywhere on the fairway between the bunnkers and the gorse. When the pin is on the right side of the green, I'll tell the golfer to play left over the Coffin Bunkers and onto the sixth fairway, where he'll have a good view of the green eight times out of ten. If ye go too far left, ye'll end up in the light rough with a blind shot, although the line is still good....

After six pages of dialog between Desmond and Tip, Desmond does a foot note on the last page about how this was TomSimpson's favorite hole on the Old Course, and if I get a chance, I'll scan this later and try to post it.

[TEPaul]

Fascinating discussion. I've never seen the hole so it's impossible to relate--but I sure wish I knew better what it is about the essence of the hole (or the details) that makes it so inscrutable.

Do any of you think it's possible to recreate whatever it is that makes this hole so inscrutable somewhere else? And if you were able to do that some how somewhere else would golfers say the hole was impossible or unfair or unrewarding or whatever?

What if Matt Ward played it with a couple of good shots that he claimed looked good in the air and he got screwed? Do you think it's the kind of hole that would have 'diminished appeal' for him and would he perhaps call the hole a 'letdown'--like he did the "dell" hole?  

[Tommy_Naccarato]

Tom,
Mat would like the hole because it looks long and tough on the scorecard. Plus, legends have been made out there on that paticular golf hole.

Matt would also hate the hole because it's truely a multi-diemnsional golf hole. I can sit here and think of four ways to try to play the hole, and none of them would offer any respite. If you treid to play it way left, and then you got the view of the pin, you have a long and gradual false front guarding it. In fact, the front pin is death. (At least for me)

I spent over ten years studying this hole in great anticipation in playing it for the first time. After my tee shot, a very good driver into the wind, as Mike has mentioned the Bermuda Triangle, and thats really accurate because you literally get turned all around. I ended up just absollutely crunching my next shot, only to find out that I was playing to the flag on #5!

[Darren_Kilfara]

I've quite enjoyed playing #13 at TOC - it's a unique hole with a fun green complex - but it always seemed to me to be one of the more luck-dominated holes on the golf course. It's challenge is similar to that at #1: more often than not you'll want to land your approach as close to the front of the green as possible without leaving it short. As at #1 (and very few other approaches on the Old Course), only an aerial approach will do - you can easily argue that this is one of the hole's prime weaknesses - although the penalty for coming up short isn't quite as draconian as Swilken Burn at #1. The approach tends to be a bit more straightforward, and dare I say easier, playing into the wind than downwind, precisely because it makes stopping an aerial approach on the front of the green significantly easier.

Because a high and lofted approach is needed, I always found that the best place to put your drive is halfway up the bank past the Coffins and short of the Cat's Trap, from which you can easily hoist your ball high into the air. Failing the length (and luck) to reach that, I never really found much of an advantage in going left or right off the tee - anywhere in the fairway would do. The one "hidden" pin position on the green, back right beyond the ridge that brings the front-right bunker very much into play, can be attacked with a fade from the right almost as easily as a straight shot from the left; there isn't really much to hide a flag on the left.

Remember: I'm as big a booster of TOC as there is on this site (including Tommy!).  But having said that, I think the inscrutability of #13 has less to do with having too many good options to choose between than with having too few. It's very much a hole to play defensively: pick a line off the tee and stick with it, straying not into the gorse on the right or the row of bunkers in the middle, and then play conservatively into the middle of the huge green unless your drive is good/lucky enough to give you thoughts of attack. I suppose it's good to have a hole like this in the middle of a course so subject to attack, and uniqueness in a golf hole always has something to recommend itself. But #13 is not one of my dozen or so favorite holes on TOC.

Cheers,
Darren

[Evan_Green]

I know the secret to playing this hole!!!

Fire up the Tiger Woods golf video game and you can blast it on the green in one shot!!

St. Andrews is a pitch and putt on that game- i shot 58 last time I played it!