If I had a postcard Los Angeles Country Club, The par 3 tee box on the 11th hole offers breathtaking views. Downhill and in the distance, towers of the city skyline surround the tall, sloping green, protected by three bear claw-shaped bunkers.
But this hole has more than just a view, it has a symbolic meaning.is one of 5 par 3s on the North Course, The venue for the 123rd U.S. Open, which starts Thursday. A typical US Open course has only four par-3 holes, so it’s rare to see all of these different holes together.
In an era where mass drives are the norm, this signature feature tests the accuracy of a player attempting to gauge a par 3 flagstick from as close as about 100 yards or as far as 300 yards. The hall forms a precious collection of gemstones. The club will host its first major tournament.
Richard Short, former club president and co-chair of the U.S. Open committee, said of how club members view the holes, “I think they look at each hole individually because there are too many holes. It’s different,” he said. “They’re proud of all of them, but they’re not sorted to be able to sort all five.”
But the one that deserves special classification is number 15. That’s the ace hole.
Shorts played at the course last October. The 15th hole was played just 78 yards in the 2017 Walker Cup, but on the day Shorts played it was 120 yards because the flag was farther back on the green. Shorts had a clean hit with the 9-iron, and he felt the ball was approaching the hole. But even with his pin hidden behind the front bunker, Shorts pulled out a putter.
Approaching the green, I didn’t notice the ball until I looked into the cup and grinned. The 15th was the shorts’ first hole-in-one.
Heading into the Open Championship, he made a bold prediction about the 124-yard hole on the tournament’s scorecard.
“I think we’ll see some hole-in-ones on the 15th,” said Shorts, brother of New York Times crossword creator Will. “It’s not going to be easy. If someone hits the right shot, they’re good.”
There were notable players last month, with Southern California club pro Michael Block scoring a hole-in-one at the PGA Championship and Scotty Schaeffler scoring a hole-in-one at the Charles Schwab Challenge the following week.
Schaeffler The world No. 1 may have an advantage because six years ago he competed in the Walker Cup at Los Angeles Country Club as an amateur with prospective British Open qualifier Colin Morikawa.
Judging by the statistics, par 3 leader Players on the PGA Tour are also potential favorites. World No. 2 Jon Rahm ranks his number one in this category (2.92 strokes average), followed by Max Houma (2.94 strokes). Schaeffler ranked fifth.
In 2013, Homa, then a senior at the University of California, Berkeley, shot 1st round 61 At the Los Angeles Country Club en route to winning the PAC-12 tournament. Rahm, then a freshman at Arizona State, finished 10th.
Still, that limited experience may not guarantee success, says architect Gil Hanse, who restored George C. Thomas Jr.’s 1928 design in 2010.
“Par 3s don’t favor one type of player,” Hanse said. “We’re talking wedge accuracy and his 3-wood accuracy here, so there’s a huge gap between one player being able to achieve them all.”
USGA Championship Director Jeff Hall, who set up the 7,421-yard, par-70 course for the Open, marveled at the “dramatic variety” of these so-called short holes. The two longest par 3s are the 4th at 228 yards and his 11th at 290 yards.
“You don’t get a lot of par-3 holes like this every week on tour,” he said.
Each par 3 is problematic in its own way, featuring natural hazards and hard, tricky greens.
The first par-3, 228-yard 4th hole has Barranca, a dry sand canyon typical of Southern California, and slides like an anaconda down the front nine. At the 4th hole, it hides in front of the green and curls back to the back of the green. There are also two sloping bunkers on the greenside.
“It’s a small target for a long haul, with a lot of trouble around,” Hanse said.
In 1927 and 1928, Thomas worked with Billy Bell to improve on W. Herbert Fowler’s original 1921 design, creating several par 3s with the flexibility to be played as par 4s. The 284-yard 7th hole is one of them. Hall said it’s a par 3 at the British Open and can be played for 264 yards depending on the location of the tee.
However, the 7th green is particularly difficult to read due to the terrain. “If a putt feels less uphill than it actually is, it’s because you look at the barranca and think it’s more downhill,” says Hanse.
One of three par 5s on the course, one more than usual at the U.S. Open, the 8-hole, 547-yard par 5, brings players down to the final par 3 on the front nine. The 9th hole is 171 yards on the scorecard.
“It feels like a flat hole, but it’s actually uphill, which is deceptive,” Hanse said. “He has four different quadrants to move the pins on the green.”
During tournaments, officials change pin locations not only to reduce wear on the greens, but to challenge players. Hall, who oversees course settings as the golf association’s director of championships, explained that the Los Angeles club’s tee box also has room for up and down tees. So, depending on where the tee and pin are located that day, golfers could end up dealing with a 30-yard difference on the eighth hole, he said.
The next par 3, the 11th, will test the players’ adaptability. From a distance, “it’s a very nice view. Sometimes you just want to stand there and not hit the tee shot,” said Shorts, the club’s former president.
The 11th course gives you an up-close look at a history lesson. This green is modeled after his 15th hole on the West Links Course at North Berwick Golf Club in Scotland. In the 19th century, when Crimean War veterans were playing on that famous hole, they noticed that the green jutted forward and then sloped downward from right to left.the shape reminded him Fortress of Sevastopol.
The triangle protruding beside the entrance of the fortress, Redang. Since then, redundancies have become a favorite feature of golf course designers to incorporate into their course designs.
Thomas turned the 11th hole at the Los Angeles Country Club into a reverse redone because the 39-yard-deep green slopes left to right. However, the downhill again becomes a slight uphill, so Hanse said it only reaches halfway down the green.
“When you look at how much dirt they moved to make this, it was actually quite a monumental achievement,” he said. “You look down into the valley and suddenly you see a green bump sticking out of it.
The final hole, the par-3 15th, is located after the par-5 14th hole, which is 623 yards long. The 15th was followed by three stout par 4s, the first two averaging 531 yards, and after that he averaged 492 yards on the 18th. You may be tempted to birdie on the 15th before facing .
Please note: Hanse put in a slight hump that separates the front sliver of the green from the back of the main 15th.
“Just putting it on the green is not enough,” Hanse said. “In order not to worry about three putts, you have to stay inside the green.”
Or, like shorts, you can just fill in the holes and not worry about it at all.
