Favorite and Least Favorite Holes at Augusta National?

[iacas]

Pretty straightforward here:

• What's your favorite hole at Augusta National?
• What's your least favorite hole at ANGC?

Why?

Take it however you want to take it - favorite hole if you were to play it, or favorite hole to watch in the Masters… favorite architecture or strategy… whatever you want.

[saevel25]

My least favorite is probably 11. I am not a fan of the changes they made. I think they need to make it less a deal on driving the ball versus the challenging approach shot. 

My favorite is 13. I love  how the golf hole contours around the bend with the creek on the left. I like that the slope on the 2nd shot makes a shorter par 5 a bit more challenging. It is a pretty good risk/reward hole. To me, it might be the best designed hole on the course. 

[boogielicious]

15 is my favorite for the drama that unfolds, not for it's aesthetics. It seems the Masters can be lost there every year and the winner doesn't make a mistake there. Eagles are hard to get, but on this hole it is every harder because they have to get on a very fast green with a wood or hybrid or sometimes a long iron over water with no help from any rough.

17 is a dull hole. It is hard I guess, but there nothing that appears challenging to the viewer from the way they film it. It is a hole where making par is good for the winner and challengers have to birdie. It used to have the Eisenhower tree, which made it harder, but that went down in a storm a few years ago.

[HJJ003]

The two par 5s on the back are my favorites. I think I would love to play #13 more, but I love to watch #15 at the masters especially on Sunday because it almost always causes some good movement on the leaderboard. 

My least favorite is #4. Overly long par 3, and the green just wasn’t designed to hold shots from 240 yards. Kind of a unimaginative hole to me. 

[DeadMan]

My least favorite is 7. It's the tightest fairway on the course. The green is not designed for a mid-iron approach, which is what the hole generally demands. There is also very little chance to save par from an error off the tee because of the bunkers in front of the green. The trademark of 7 is that it's hard. Which just means boring. 11 is a close second, for similar reasons.

My favorite is 13. I love the tee shot there. The risk/reward on both the tee shot and the approach is great. You can play your tee shot left, towards the creek, and get a shorter shot into the green with a flat lie, but you bring the creek into play. If you bail out right, you have a longer approach with a severe side slope. Then you have the decision on whether to go for it or not, which brings the creek into play again. The hole also allows the spectacular shot from the trees into the green. Just an awesome hole.

[NM Golf]

I guess my least favorite would be #7 as it is the only hole on the course that I don't have any real memory of. I picked 13 as my favorite, but it's a toss up. I love #10, 12, 15 is awesome, and 16 with a Sunday pin. I mean that whole place is just so cool it's hard to pick one hole.

[RussUK]

Favourite is hole 12. Its just the look of it, how the green is framed by the trees and bunkers front and back. For me that hole always springs to mind when i think of the Masters. Plus its been a good test of skill in recent years and can make or break a round.

 

Least favourite? Hole 4, just seems dull in comparison to many of the others. Just doesn't scream Masters to me

[DaveP043]

I'm with others, I like the 13th best.  It seems a great use of the contours, a significantly sloping fairway, a sidehill second shot to a demanding target, even a tough layup.  Maybe my least favorite is 14.  It seems that the green is so severely sloped that a difference of a foot or two can be the difference between a very short birdie putt, or a difficult 2-putt.

17 minutes ago, DeadMan said:

My least favorite is 7. It's the tightest fairway on the course. The green is not designed for a mid-iron approach, which is what the hole generally demands. 

Some of us old folks remember when this hole, at 400 yards or so, was played with a driver and an uphill 6 or 7 iron from 150 or so.  Now that they've added 50 yards, and the players have gotten longer, its a 3-wood and an uphill 8-iron from 175.  I kind of like that there's a tough nearly-straight hole at this point in the round.

[ncates00]

13 of course is amazing.  I don't like 18.  Too narrow of a chute off the tee.  My push draw will not work on that hole LOL.

[NM Golf]

14 minutes ago, ncates00 said:

13 of course is amazing.  I don't like 18.  Too narrow of a chute off the tee.  My push draw will not work on that hole LOL.

I was amazed when I saw that hole in person, it's not near as tight as it looks on television. Jordan Speith hit a couple of horrible drives there on Thursday and Sunday.

[ncates00]

5 minutes ago, NM Golf said:

I was amazed when I saw that hole in person, it's not near as tight as it looks on television. Jordan Speith hit a couple of horrible drives there on Thursday and Sunday.

Ok cool.  I've been to Augusta once, but spent most the time on the old Corner and didn't make it to 18.  You're right, on TV it looks very, very narrow.  So much so, I worry I couldn't hit driver as I tend to have a bigger push with draw with that club than the others.  I also figured I'd have to go with 3w and get a slight heel hit to fade it a bit.

[DeadMan]

11 hours ago, DaveP043 said:

Some of us old folks remember when this hole, at 400 yards or so, was played with a driver and an uphill 6 or 7 iron from 150 or so.  Now that they've added 50 yards, and the players have gotten longer, its a 3-wood and an uphill 8-iron from 175. 

According to GolfDigest's changes (https://www.golfdigest.com/story/the-complete-changes-to-augusta-national), this hole was 365 yards until 2002. It seems unlikely they were hitting driver and a mid iron except in very specific winds.

[onthehunt526]

Though I love Augusta National's Par-5s, Golden Bell is my favorite (#12). It's a demanding tee shot in the calmest of conditions.

My least favorite hole at Augusta National is Tea Olive (#1). I understand the lengthening and trying to put the fairway bunker into play. But the 1st is just boring. It might be better if it was closer to it's original length. The 1st at ANGC isn't the best welcoming opening hole.

[Swooshgolf]

13 is my favorite. I like having to work the ball and the overall risk reward on this hole. 4 is my least favorite. I think this hole is just long and boring in comparison to the others. 

[DaveP043]

11 hours ago, DeadMan said:

According to GolfDigest's changes (https://www.golfdigest.com/story/the-complete-changes-to-augusta-national), this hole was 365 yards until 2002. It seems unlikely they were hitting driver and a mid iron except in very specific winds.

I stand corrected, obviously my memory is faulty.  I did find an interesting read about the hole here:

https://books.google.com/books?id=I24oNRbB0qsC&pg=PT89&lpg=PT89&dq=masters+seventh+hole+history&source=bl&ots=9ge2qEfnvD&sig=TfRUqRXBHa6cE47bpM341QcMp0w&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi0hKyZ_8PaAhUhVd8KHep1CYU4FBDoAQhTMAg#v=onepage&q=masters seventh hole history&f=false

There's a discussion of Fred Couples hitting 9-iron to the green in 1992, presumably shorter hitters did hit more club in the decades before that, but I just don't know for sure.  There's also an indication that the green has been moved once (1930's) and renovated in 2006, the same time the hole was extended to its current length.  Presumably, the green is designed in the way that Augusta National wants it to be.  Otherwise they'd simply rebuild it yet again.

[Chanceman]

In my opinion #5 Magnolia is an unsung hero/beast of Augusta. That green is so @#$%$ hard. But I also like the tee shot which is to a very wide fairway sweeping right and narrowing around those superb fairway bunkers and then a tough iron into the very nasty green which does not need sand protection. It is much like another MacKenzie hole I once played, i think at Hadley Wood in the UK.

[Hoganman1]

I too picked 13 as my favorite and 7 as my least favorite. I've been there probably 25 times since 1970 and remember when 7 was both shorter and tighter. I understand they had to add length because of how far the pros drive the ball now, but I think having a drivable par four would be interesting.