PLAYBOOK

34 ESPN The Magazine 08/06/2012 i l lustrat ions by INFOMENRON CHENOY/US PRESSWIRE (WOODS)

GOLF

WATERY GRAVE AZINGER: “This hole probably will decide the championship. The guy leading the tournament Saturday night will lose sleep over it. The water is in play short or pin-high right. Hit a good shot just a little o! line and it can still go into the water.”

BUNKER, BUSTER DYE: “This pot bunker is small, but it’s severe. Players get in there and have a hell of a time with it. They can hit the ball out of there into the water, and that weighs on their mind.”

GOING TO POT AZINGER: “Those pot bunkers are very much in play. That’s pitch-out material there. If you’ve got a one-shot lead on 18, you’re not safe.”

WHAT A WASTE STERBA: “The grass has actually been shaved down in the fairway that rolls into these finger bunkers and the three pot bunkers. It puts the priority on hitting a great tee shot.”

STICKY FINGERS DYE: “The bunker had to be big—it makes the green feel skinnier than it is. So I marked it out and they started digging, and soon enough there were fingers in it, and I just left it.”

RUN AWAY!DYE: “The green is within 20 or 30 feet of the sand dune—as close as they’d let me put it. If you go o! the green to the right, you’ll have a downhill lie and a shot back up over a valley to the green.”

HILLSIDE STRANGLER STERBA: “You go long left, you’re on the side of a hill chipping down to a green that rolls o! into the water. That’s one of the worst shots you can have.”

MEAN GREEN DYE: “We changed the greens from Bermuda to paspalum grass. With that grass, you can get to 12 on the stimpmeter, but not 13 or 14.” STERBA: “It’s an average day to have 25 mph winds. And if those greens are at 13, the ball would never stop.”

The closing stretch at Kiawah Island’s Ocean Course, host of this year’s PGA Championship, begins with a hole only sadists (or course designer Pete Dye) could love. The 17th, the hardest par 3 in the U.S.—seriously, look it up—is a 223-yard wind tunnel encircled by vindictive pot bunkers and a bumptious water hazard. Then comes the 18th, where sea grass and sandy dunes guard the honor of the 501-yard par 4. ESPN golf analyst Paul Azinger calls the duo terrifying. At this year’s PGA, if you can’t close, you can’t win. —SCOTT T. MILLER

THIS IS THE END

HOLE 17In 1991, the Ocean Course hosted the Ryder Cup, and during practice rounds the unthinkable was happening: The 17th was playing easy. A benign tailwind was aiding the players, but as championship director Brett Sterba says, “The wind here changes every day.” And when it turned—the tailwind becoming a headwind—everything went to hell. “It made it 10 times as hard,” recalls Dye. “Hale Irwin hit a wood!” Don’t expect many woods hit there this year. But high scores? Expect plenty of those.

HOLE 18A lob wedge from the ocean, amid towering dunes, sits the 18th tee. From there, golfers must drive over man-eating pot bunkers and a vast waste area, or attempt a 340-yard carry over the finger bunkers—a near impossibility even for the tour’s longest hitters. “If anything is blocked right, it’ll be trouble,” Sterba says. But playing safe could mean trouble too. A pulled tee shot will leave a long approach into a tiny green with more sand left and a runo! right. “That’ll give them something to think about,” says Dye.

BERT WAY

JACK NICKLAUS

DICK WILSON/JOE LEE

GILMORE HARRISON GEORGE C. THOMAS/

WILLIAM P. BELL

ALISTER MACKENZIE

ROBERT TRENT JONES

BILL COORE/BEN CRENSHAW

A.W. TILLINGHAST

ARNOLD PALMER

DONALD ROSS

PETE DYE

53.8%*

5.6%

44.4%

7.7%

40%

15.4%

31.5%

20%

33.3%

16.7%

*WOODS’ WINNING PERCENTAGE PER COURSE DESIGNER; PGA TOUR EVENTS ONLY;

MINIMUM FIVE EVENTS PER DESIGNER

TIGER TRAPS

“It just fits my eye.” That’s what Tiger Woods likes to say about courses he dominates. Well, Pete Dye has never designed one of those. As the chart shows, Woods wins less frequently (5.6%) on Dye courses than on those of any

other designer. So don’t expect a W for Tiger at Dye’s Ocean Course. It likely won’t fit his eye.