Augusta’s hellacious, terrifying, treacherous 12th is the best hole in the country
[The story appeared in the April 2, 1990, edition of Sports Illustrated.]
Don’t give me the 18th at Pebble Beach. Or the 8th at Pine Valley. The 17th at Sawgrass? Pleeeeease. Don’t tell me about number 1 at Merion. O.K., the pins have baskets instead of flags. Call the weavers’ union. You can keep the 16th at Cypress Point, too. I don’t know anybody who has made a par at the 16th at Cypress Point in my lifetime, and I won’t in the next one, so why discuss it? If that hole is a par-3, how come you have to hit a driver?
No, the best hole in the country is a hellacious, wonderful, terrifying, simple, treacherous, impossible, perfect molar-knocker of a par-3. It’s a hole you play with a seven-iron, a sand wedge and eight weeks of scuba lessons. The best hole in the country is the 12th at Augusta National. Everything else is the front nine at the Sturgeon Bay Night Links.
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Lloyd Mangrum called the 12th “the meanest little hole in the world.” Jack Nicklaus calls it “the hardest tournament hole in golf.” Fuzzy Zoeller calls it “the spookiest little par-3 we play.”
More green jackets have been lost at the 12th than at the Augusta City Dry Cleaners. When the Masters comes to shove next Sunday, you can bet somebody is going to walk away from 12 looking as though he had just heard from the IRS. Or 60 Minutes. Tom Weiskopf made a 13 there once. He bounced back the next day with a 7. That was the last time anybody saw him with hair.
Sam Snead once made an 8 there and withdrew. Toney Penna hit the flagstick and still made 5. Gary Player putted off the green twice—on consecutive days. Twelve could drive a Baptist to drink.
Don’t come to the 12th tee with a little fear hidden in your sock. Or a loop at the top. Or the Sunday Masters lead. You’ll end up with a wadded acceptance speech and a wet Foot-Joy.
In 1973, J.C. Snead doubled it in the final round and lost by a shot to Tommy Aaron. In 1977, Hubert Green was four under par through 11 holes on Friday when he buried his tee shot in a back bunker, beat his bunker blast across the green and into the creek, dropped another ball in the bunker, chipped out to 20 feet and made it for double bogey. He took himself out of the tournament on that hole, but it was a hell of a nice putt.
Jack Nicklaus might have a green coat for every day of the week right now if he hadn’t double-bogeyed 12 on Saturday in 1981. He lost by two shots to Tom Watson. You’ll recall that when Nicklaus did win again (1986), his drop-dead 30 on the back nine Sunday included a bogey on 12. If he just makes a par there, he shoots 29 and is immediately given the southeastern quadrant of the United States.
Gary Player had the Masters won in 1962 until he bogeyed 12 on Sunday and fell into a three-way tie. In the 18-hole playoff the next day, he came to 12 with a three-shot lead and bogeyed it again. Bye. In 1964, Dave Marr was three back and on a run when he skipped one off the water, onto the bank and back in the water. Glory has a funny way of going glug, glug at 12.
In 1982, Seve Ballesteros bogeyed it Sunday and lost by one. On the last day in 1984, Larry Nelson came to the 12th nipping at Ben Crenshaw’s spikes. Nelson was within one shot, but couldn’t decide between a six-iron and a seven-iron. He should’ve chosen a waffle iron. “I hit it so bad I didn’t know whether to tell it to get up or get down,” says Nelson. It bisected the creek perfectly. Nelson made a 5 and finished fourth. In 1987, Jodie Mudd bogeyed the hole twice and doubled it once and lost by a shot.
This is a hole that proves you don’t need 230 yards, six miles of railroad ties and an island green surrounded by alligator purses to be great. “If holes were cars,” says Peter Jacobsen, “the 12th would be a Cadillac and the 17th at Sawgrass would be a Yugo.” Says Robert Trent Jones Jr., a golf course architect, “It’s the perfect example of less architecture, more golf.”
The funny thing is, from the tee it looks like a Twinkie. It’s just a friendly little 155-yard par-3 with a babbling brook running in front of the green and a happy grove of pine trees swaying behind it. And it’ll rip your lips off. It has broken more men than bad whiskey and the over-under put together.
It’s a pampered little par-3. It even has a thermostat. Since its green gets very little sunlight, it can be ruined by a frost. In 1981, they meticulously dug it up, installed water pipes 10 inches underneath the surface and put it back together. Now, if it gets too cold, they run 60° to 80° water through the pipes.
What they ought to do is bronze it. The 12th hole has more history behind it than Helen Hayes. For one thing, the bridge that crosses Rae’s Creek is known as the Hogan bridge. A plaque there commemorates Ben Hogan’s thrilling 274 in the Masters in 1953. Just try to walk across that thing without getting goose bumps the size of Pinnacles. It was on the tee at the 12th in 1964 that a nervous Nicklaus cold-shanked an eight-iron. Bobby Jones, his idol, was watching.
The green is about as big as the Des Moines phone book—only nine yards deep in some places, and 35 yards wide. There are three bunkers guarding it: two in back and one in front. Better to have died as a young boy than to get stuck in one of those back bunkers. You’ll be faced with a downhill blast to a downhill green that is only slightly faster than the roof of the Transamerica building.
Jones, who designed the course with the Scottish architect Alister MacKenzie, once wrote about the 12th, “Here the distance must be gauged very accurately, and the wind sweeping down along Rae’s Creek is often deceptive to the player standing on the tee about to hit…. Once the tee shot has been played into the creek, the short pitch to the shallow green is terrifying indeed.”
What’s even more terrifying, indeed, is that it’s all tucked back into a nook of pines that makes the wind swirl in, out and around the hole. As such, it tortures the best golfers in the world. There are more theories about how to play the wind at 12 than Ping has lawyers. Hogan once said, “Never hit on 12 until you feel the wind on your cheek.” Ken Venturi says to look at the flags on 11 and 12, because they’re never up at the same time. Don’t hit when the flag is down at 12, he says. Player says, “If the flag on 11 is blowing left to right and the flag on 12 is blowing right to left, pay no attention to what’s happening at 11.” Zoeller watches the trees on the far side of the 13th tee to see where the wind is coming from. Jacobsen says he looks at everything, including the fans behind him. Curtis Strange looks at the water and at the flags. And then there’s Green: “They say if the dogwood tree on the right of the 13th tee is moving, then the wind is blowing over the 12th green, and when the dogwood stops moving, there’s no wind. I don’t believe it.”
Bob Rosburg, in the days before he had an antenna growing out of his ear, came to the hole on a windy day and hit a four-iron. Now, Rosburg was never known as the Arnold Schwarzenegger of golf. In fact, it was said that nobody hit more frog hairs in regulation than Rosburg. But on this particular hole, the wind died just as he hit, and Rosburg’s ball didn’t just clear the water, it cleared the green, the back bunkers, the terraces behind the green and the fence behind the terraces. It ended up on the 9th hole of the bordering Augusta Country Club. You got a line on that, Rossi?
So Rosburg had to retee. The wind came up again. What to do? Rosburg swallowed hard and kept the very same club in his hand. This time, his ball landed 15 feet from the pin and he made the most maddening 5 in the history of golf.
Playing with Rosburg that day was Arnold Palmer, who could sympathize. The wind at 12 probably cost him the 1959 Masters. Leading the tournament the last day, Palmer hit a shot that the wind knocked into the creek. He dropped, pitched over the creek and the green, chipped back again and two-putted for a 6. Palmer finished third, two shots behind the winner, Art Wall Jr. Cold-blooded little hole, isn’t it?
Nicklaus has a rule for the 12th: Don’t go for the pin if it’s on the right. Hit for the middle of the green, make your par and get out while you can. There is not enough room, and too much wind, sand and water to go for it. “It comes down to whether you want to keep it in play, or go for a 2 and come away with a 5,” Nicklaus says. He must know what he’s d
