Golf Club Atlas
GolfClubAtlas.com => Golf Course Architecture Discussion Group => Topic started by: Mike Hendren on April 02, 2025, 06:19:07 PM
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Universally acclaimed as a great strategic short par, is the 10th at Riviera functionally obsolete in today’s game?
Now my absurd question: Would the hole be any less strategic if its bunkers were filled in at grade? Uglier, no doubt.
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Bogey,
I want to caveat that I really like Riviera. Love it in fact. Top 10 personal.
But is 10 still amazing after all these years? It is my opinion that the decision on short par 4’s isn’t based on distance anymore (driver vs 5 iron for instance). Everyone hits the longest club they can. And for that reason, I think 10 becomes distinctly more interesting if it was fairway all the way from the palm trees to the alternate green. Increase the variance of difficulty for the second shot the closer you get to the green is what I’m saying.
Hole might be more interesting with filled in greenside bunkers. But not fairway ones?
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Hole might be more interesting with filled in greenside bunkers. But not fairway ones?
That’s how it was originally.
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I think anytime you place a wide and narrow green where the narrow part is in the direct line of play, you get a compelling golf hole.
It's one of the great pieces of strategic golf course design.
Whether it's a short par 3 (Aug 12) or short par 4 (Riv 10) or whatever length of hole, it gets you thinking about angles, your ability to stop the ball, and the penalty for being too bold.
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What’s so great about an extremely shallow green that slopes down from front to back?
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Universally acclaimed as a great strategic short par, is the 10th at Riviera functionally obsolete in today’s game?
Functionally obsolete for whom? People who play it on a day-to-day basis or the professionals who play in the Genesis tournament?
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A double digit handicapper might not hit that green all year.
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As of a few years ago, my take was that the bunker behind the green makes the hole goofy hard for a typical player. I'm looking at a photo of the back bunker and it's so big, deep and maybe 20 or more yards wide. Bunkers line about 75% of the green's perimeter.
The problem is that some professional golfers can drive the ball past the green, so I guess they don't want them having a relatively easy up and down from behind the green. But for day to day play, the huge and rather deep fronting bunker requires either of two plays. You can play safe sideways and try to hit the front left of the green, which is doable, and then try to two putt to the back pin positions from there. I did that once and it was a very memorable down-in-three moment for me. The other option is to try and hit a soft bunker shot at the right half of the green, which slopes steeply away from the player and is only about 10 yards deep. 95-99% of the time you'll be in the back bunker for your next shot, which requires a tough but not impossible shot back onto the green where a challenging double bogey is within reach.
I don't think that back bunker was always there. How could you make it tough during tournament week for the pros? There has to be a better solution. You could cut the grass to fairway height all the way to the 11th fairway and have them try to get up and down from 25-40 yards away. Or you could let the grass grow to 4-6" and let them struggle with that.
I still love the hole for the way the precise layup short of the left fairway bunker gives you a straight-on look at the deep but very narrow green. From there the front pin locations are gettable. But it's not one of my favorite holes on the course, especially when watching the Genesis Open. Most pros try to drive the green and it seems at least half of them end up in the grove of trees left of the green where it's a crap shoot whether they have a line and a lie to work with.