On the lowest portion of Augusta National Golf Club, some 175 feet below the stately clubhouse, rests the fabled 12th hole.
Named the Golden Bell, it’s a cozy par-3 with the green tucked in a corner and protected in back by looming pine trees and an assortment of beautiful but ominous vegetation, in front by the serene yet chilling Rae’s Creek, and from above by swirling breezes that Sam Snead once referred to as a whirlpool.
At 155 yards, it is Augusta National’s shortest yet most perplexing hole. Forever shrouded in mystery, it is here, at the heart of Amen Corner, where players look to the heavens for answers before pulling the trigger with their tee shots. Even when all is calm, players instinctively gaze upward searching for clues about winds that are usually steady or come from out of the blue.
“You get on your hands and knees and pray,” Patrick Reed said about his strategy for the 12th. “It’s so deceiving there, because the clouds can go one way, the flag will go the opposite way and the trees are going another way.
“Then you throw up grass, and that’s going in a different direction, so it just confuses you. Basically all you can do is step up and try and be confident in what you’ve decided to do and then swing away.”
Historically, the 12th, despite its relatively flat putting surface, ranks as the third-toughest hole during the Masters with a 3.28 field average. Only the par-4 10th (4.31) and par-4 11th (4.29) have played tougher in 79 editions of the Masters.
That’s why the indelible memories in the long history of the Masters involving the mythical 12th tilt heavily toward the disappointing side.
Tom Weiskopf in 1980 dumped five balls into the water and made a 13 on the 12th hole, the highest score relative to par in tournament history.
In 2011, Rory McIlroy’s meltdown in the final round included four putts and a double-bogey 5 on the 12th. In 2013, defending champion Bubba Watson made a 15-footer for a 10 after he knocked three balls into Rae’s Creek.
While the water, back bunker and pine trees form a trifecta of perilous trouble, the wind remains the single greatest barrier to success on the 12th. That’s because players have no clue what the breeze will do when the ball is in the air.
The bridge that crosses Rae’s Creek and takes players to the green was named in honor of two-time Masters champion Ben Hogan, who said he never hit his tee shot until he felt wind “on my left cheek.”
Others secure reconnaissance by looking to see what the flags on the 11th and 12th greens are doing. The movement of trees, clouds and Rae’s Creek offers other evidence.
“I think it’s always a pretty good guess,” six-time Masters champion Jack Nicklaus said. “But I thought that when you played 12, you worried less about the wind and what you want to do with the shot. The more you worry about the wind, the less chance you have of executing the shot that you really want to play, which is really right over the middle of the bunker.
“No. 12 was always uncomfortable to play — even though, without wind, 12 may be the easiest hole on the golf course. With a little bit of a breeze, it may be the toughest.”
Four-time Masters champion Tiger Woods always figures out how far he wants to hit the ball and what trajectory he wants to use.
And then he holds his breath.
“You hope a lot on that hole,” Woods said. “You never know if you’re going to get a wind gust.”
Billy Horschel says he always hopes someone is hitting before him.
“And if they did something good, I tried and copied it. And if they didn’t, I tried not to copy it,” he said. “We try and flight something down. We’ll hit a 7-iron 140yards if we have to. We just try and think about what the wind was doing when we were on the 11th green. When you hit your second shot on No. 11, however it reacted in the air, whether it took off or got stood up, that’s what we go off of.”
Larry Mize, whose miracle chip-in for birdie on the 11th hole during a playoff in 1987 earned him his green jacket and left Greg Norman crushed, always started gathering his data just after walking off the 11th green.
“I do check out everything,” Mize said. “You gather as many variables as you can. But I never toss grass on the 12th tee. I toss grass just off the 11th green, because standing there you are closer to the 12th green than you are when you’re standing on the 12th tee. To me, that’s a more accurate reading.”
Three-time Masters champion Phil Mickelson said he had an advantage on the 12th hole over the vast majority of the field because he hits the ball left-handed.
“That hole is a much different hole for me than it is a right-handed player because of the shot dispersion,” Mickelson said. “When I talk about shot dispersion … when I pull it the face closes and it goes long right for a lefty. So if I aim for the middle of the green, it’ll go long right and catch the green. If I come out of it, it goes short left and still catches the green. ...
“Twelve is not the hole that I worry about or stress about. We try to judge the wind, and we just hit a solid shot. But a right-handed player has a much smaller area technically to hit to, because if they come out of it, then it goes short right into the water, and if they pull it a little bit, then it goes long left over the green. So they have to be much more precise.”
Even though a short iron is the club of choice most of the time, the 12th has yielded only three aces in tournament history: in 1947 by Claude Harmon (7-iron), in 1959 by William Hyndman (6-iron) and in 1988 by Curtis Strange (7-iron), who promptly took the ball from the cup and tossed it into Rae’s Creek.
“We’ve all given away balls to Rae’s Creek, so when I picked it out of the hole I just tossed it in there. It was spontaneous,” Strange said.
“I was criticized for it by some people. I remember one guy asked me why I wouldn’t have wanted to give the ball to my sons. I told him, ‘I sure hope I give more to my sons than a golf ball.’”
Strange, who said he pushed the tee shot a little bit, said figuring out the wind was a feel thing. Figuring out the time to hit the tee shot was a feel thing, too.
“When I felt the wind was the wind I wanted, I hit the ball quickly,” Strange said. “It’s one of those things you don’t usually do, but there you pull the trigger a lot faster when you figure out what you want to do.
“And what a lot of people don’t realize is the green is so small. You’d step on it and go, ‘My God, are you kidding me? How shallow can a green be?’ I mean, in the middle of the green it is five steps deep. You have to play the perfect shot on that hole, and you have to guess perfectly.”
And get lucky sometimes. Just ask Fred Couples.
In 1992, Couples came to the 12th in the final round with victory hanging in the balance. With the traditional Sunday hole location cut in the upper right corner of the green, Couples hit 8-iron and watched his ball come up short and start rolling down the shaved bank toward Rae’s Creek.
Despite gravity and history, the ball somehow hung up in thicker grass and stayed dry.
Calling it at the time “the biggest break of my life,” Couples got up-and-down for par to remain in the lead and went on to win the green jacket.
“I’m not one to try and hit the middle of the green,” Couples said. “I’ve played the hole well enough, but I usually try and find the pin and hit the shot. I’ve played 150 rounds there. If I only played 10 rounds and was asked your question (about strategy), I would say just try and hit the green on your left. But I know every kind of a wind direction, so normally I look to the right.”
Eleven years later, Scott Verplank authored another stunning chapter to the saga that is the 12th hole. En route to a career-best tie for eighth in 2003, Verplank did something no one else has done.
He went 2-2-2-2.
In the first round he made a 10-footer from left of the hole. In the second he made a 2-footer. In the third he knocked it in from 15feet to the right of the hole. In the final round, he was pure from 15 feet below the hole.
“There’s a lot of luck involved. You have to hope there are no extenuating circumstances when your ball is in the air,” Verplank said. “Yes, you have to hit good shots and then hit good putts. But obviously it’s all about the wind standing on that tee.”
Verplank started formulating his plan of attack as he walked from the ninth green to the 10th tee. He always looked beyond the clubhouse to see what the flags were doing on the old driving range. He kept that in mind even if he got to the 12th tee and the flags at 11 and 12 were blowing in the opposite direction.
“You just have to somehow become confident with what you’re going to do and then do it,” Verplank said. “If it’s a windy day, it’s a tough shot, no doubt about it. And don’t forget, hitting into the water is horrible, but if you go over the green it’s equally horrible.
“It’s just a great hole.”
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