AUGUSTA, Ga. – Amen Corner is part of the knowledge of Augusta National and the Masters Tournament. Once again with feeling: Amen corner is poetic shorthand for the approach on 11, all from 12, tee shot on 13. Water hole, water hole, water hole. If you’re trying to win the spring invite here, your spiky photos there can either make your day, your week, and your life.
Recently – roughly 70 years after Herbert Warren Wind coined the phrase Amen Corner – Adam Scott (in a wonderful interview with Golf Digest) referred to 9, 10, 11 and 12 as a “problem area of the course”. Many good players would agree! Consider Greg Norman at 9 on Sunday in 1996; Rory McIlroy on 10 on Sunday in 2011; Raymond Floyd at 11 in a playoff in 1990; Jordan Spieth on 12th in 2016.
If you practice in Scott’s “trouble zone” with Amen Corner playing in your ears (it was a song title before it was a golf course destination), you might think of a similar stretch on the course, with the same pace as Herb Wind’s original: approach marked on 9, all 10, tee shot on 11.
If only it had a name and a little history.
The par-4 9th green is so steep that even with modern low-spinning balls you can have an approach shot to the green, roll off the putting surface and finish 30 yards short of the green. On the green it is even worse. Here comes 5.
The par-4 10th is an easy swinging hole – until it isn’t. If you find yourself playing out of the pine needles and through the pines on either side of the fairway, you’ll do well to be within 10 feet of the hole in three shots. It smells like 5 from here.
The tee box for the par-4 11th hole is deep on a tight shot with no difference in era, just straight ball golf, driver in hand, for the most part. (It’s over 500 yards.) If you drive it playing, you should have something short for the first. If you don’t, you’re looking at 5 other possibilities.
To review: three fouls on those three holes and you’re playing that stretch in 15 strokes. There’s no shame in playing those three holes in 12 shots, none at all. It’s not like there are any green light birds out there.
Which brings us to Justin RoseThe 45-year-old English golfer who faced Rory McIlroy in a one-hole playoff at last year’s Masters. Rose, the leader at the club, was on a practice putting green early Sunday night last year when McIlroy was playing the 18th hole. This was on the Washington Street side of the clubhouse, across from the course. There were very few people there; Rose’s agent, Mark Steinberg, was one of them. He heard the groan coming from the clubhouse, knew it meant McIlroy had bogeyed the last tee and that Rose and McIlroy would soon begin a playoff, each looking to win at Augusta for the first time. Rose is still searching.
Rose birdied the 9th, 10th and 11th holes in 9 shots Friday en route to a second-round 69, three under par on this par-72 hole course. Nine shots! Bird, bird, bird. A three-hole stretch that put him in the thick of this tournament at his half. He is five under through two rounds. Once again, there he is.
Rose was asked about the stretch after his round and this is what he said:
“Given these conditions, with the fairways opening up, you hit a good shot, you’re getting a good angle on the 9th green, so I don’t necessarily see it as too difficult,” he said.
“It’s just a pretty hole, isn’t it?”
To see, of course.
“I think 11, where the pin was today, is the most comfortable flag on the green. Back where you want to hit the ball. Every other pin, you have to play away from the flag stick, which makes it difficult.
“But the way the holes played today, it was 9-iron, 9-iron, 7-iron. So it wasn’t as tough as it could have been.”
Right, as the kids say.
You may know that Justin Rose is a horse guy. Loves horses, has racehorses, knows horseplay.
You may know that many spectators here go through the gates, check out the 9th green, take the downhill walk to the 10th, and end up in a spot where they can see the tee shots on the 11th.
We offer a name for this stretch, approach on 9, all 10, tee shot on 11, a nod to Rose and his Friday game and his love of the course:
Club turn.
If Rose is wearing green on Sunday night, we’ll visit again.
Until then, weekend.
Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at Michael.Bamberger@Golf.com.
;)
