The Hidden History of Augusta National’s 11th Hole l The Hole At l Golf Digest

Welcome to ‘THE Hole At’, where Golf Digest’s Derek Duncan (our go-to for all things golf course architecture) breaks down the hidden histories behind the most famous holes in golf. In this episode, Derek dives into the long & difficult Par-4 11th hole at Augusta National Golf Club. From its original dogleg-right design, to the removal of a fairway bunker and grazing cattle, to remaining one of the most daunting and critical holes of Amen Corner during The Masters, Derek explores the fascinating history behind one of the game’s most iconic golf holes.

Host: Derek Duncan
Producer & Editor: Ben Walton
Cinematography: Ben Walton & Will Fullerton
Audio: Mike Kelly
Executive Producer: Christian Iooss

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Hello I’m Derek Duncan architecture editor at Golf Digest with another extensive look at a single hole this time the 11th at Augusta National Augusta National is among a handful of courses like St Andrews Riviera and Pine Valley that boast more than one hole worthy of the deepest of architectural

Dives the 12th might be the most famous par three in the world so short so beguiling so critical to Master’s outcomes the par 513th has been considered one of the greatest holes in golf nearly from the moment it was created and maybe no hole has been more

Seen by golf in the 18th the site of nationally televised coronation since the 1950s but if we’re trying to understand the purpose and evolution of Augusta National’s architecture specifically how technology and tournament golf have shaped the course since the first Masters was played in 1934 there’s no better hold to study

Than the long brutish par 4 11th Augusta National was not always what it appears to be today chairman Clifford Roberts and Bobby Jones began making alterations immediately once they observed the playing conditions the way the game’s best players attacked the course and how patrons moved about while viewing the action before the end of the 1930s significant Reconstruction had

Occurred on holds like 7 9 10 and 14 the story of how Augusta National has altered and flexed out its design how it more from this to this can be told through the transformation of the 11th hole as we know it today the 11th begins with the

Drive over a valley to a crowned Fairway followed by a long second shot downhill into a green angled menacingly against a mirrored Blue pond it’s historically the most difficult hole in Augusta National in relation to par with a stroke average of over 4.3 and it currently clocks in at

520 yards of muscle and electricity it didn’t start out that way the 11th hole that Alistair McKenzie and Bobby Jones designed in 1931 named white dogwood for the 155 white dogwood trees that lined the Fairway was conceived as the second hole after the inaugural Masters the nins were switched

Since HS 2 3 and four today’s 11th 12th and 13th sat in the lowest section of the course and took the longest to warm up and sometimes even thaw out after a morning Frost not ideal for early tournament rounds remember the first Masters was played in March not April

Had the sides not been swapped it’s unlikely this Trio of holes would have earned imort ality is Amen Corner as Herbert Warren wind christened them in 1958 flameout seldom become legendary when they happen on the first nine we recognized the 11th as the beginning of the Fate altering descent into am man

Corner but the Mackenzie Jones version of the whole didn’t look or play anything like it does today as we can see on this routing map that McKenzie Drew in 1932 the original 11th played 76 ft downhill from T set above and behind the area that’s now the 10th green this

Is an elevation of of the 10th and 11th hole which were originally as we said holes one and two the original Green on 10 was down in this hollow and in 1938 Perry Maxwell moved it up to this null where it still resides today the 11th T was behind the

Green here at 10 approximately right here which corresponds to this elevation on the 11th hole and as you can see the original 11th T was right behind the 10th green this section of the Augustine National Property which is the far southern end of the old Fruitland Nursery opposite where the clubhouse

Compound stands was the most heavily wooded part and holds 10 11 and 12 had to be sliced out of the existing Pines 11 measured 405 yards for the members and 430 yards from the tournament te’s but played much shorter because of its downhill orientation the official yardage for the first dozen or so

Masters was 415 y right in the middle of the Fairway was a cluster of small bunkers McKenzie modeled this complex like many other aspects of Augusta National on a prominent feature at St Andrews the principal’s nose bunker at the 16th hole you can see those principal nose bunkers here in this

Photograph that’s marked 1948 the placement of these bunkers divided the hole into two sections forcing players to choose a side to play to McKenzie described the ideal second shot as playing slightly back into the tilt of the putting surface nestled into the bend of a stream that feeds into Ray

Creek the club struggled economically in its early years during the height of the Great Depression and from from 1943 to 1945 amid America’s involvement in World War II no Masters Tournaments were played with scant funds to maintain the Course Augusta temporarily let the holds go to passer and actually raised and

Grazed Livestock on the course in an attempt to generate income according to Cliff Roberts they lost money on this too but after the war the country and the club found itself armed with a different more forward-looking mindset as life and tournament golf Resumed players like Byron Nelson Ben Hogan and Sam Sneed were in their playing Prime and they were joined by a new generation of professional golfers this was the impetus of Augusta National to hire Robert Trent Jones the country’s pre-eminent golf architect of the 1940s and 50s to begin a modernization program

That included remodeling many of the greens and bunkers and constructing an entirely new par 316th by the time Trent Jones sought the 11th had become essentially a drive and Pitch hole the central Fairway bunkers McKenzie had built to force players to choose one side or the other was no

Longer in Play Because contestants were routinely driving over it a downhill carry of perhaps 230 yards a big hitter Trent Jones wrote in his 1988 book golf’s magnificent challenge could slice the ball around the corner and get it almost to the green it was really an inadequate hole for the length the

Professionals were driving the ball furthermore the creek bed that protected the green was often low and allowed for players to recover just as they could when coming up short on the par five 13th Trent Jones was not someone who needed help in Vending ways to make holes more difficult and he had two

Proposals the first was to Dam the creek next to the green that created a small pond where recover we would no longer be an option two bunkers were later added Behind the Green the second change was the shifting of the teas from its place on the null behind the 10th green to a lower Grove of Pines 90 yard to the left this move achieved three things it turned 11 from a dog leg right into a fairly straight

Hole it turned a running drive into one that went slightly uphill and didn’t chase and it added 30 yards to the hole making it the third longest par forward Augusta National and now one of the coures most difficult it’s hard to imagine an am man Corner being what it

Is today without the Trent Jones alterations to the 11th what made the hole so difficult was not just the length but the degree of difficulty of the approach shot where soaring downhill irons and woods were at the mercy of the buffeting winds and the typically hard Bermuda grass greens the incoming shot

Is not just long and perilous with water lurking it also demands Precision since the green is slightly plateaued Falling Away sharply into the pond short left and sliding down around a slope off the right flank the big Mount short and right of the green also factor into the

Approach shot the more in the past than they do today over the years they became more formalized as a distinctive characteristic of the hole early on and during dry years when the Ry grass overseed of the fairways was firm balls coming in from the left could car them

Off the Mounds and get close to the putting surface now the Mounds prevent balls that land short from traveling even farther right almost like a back stop for players punching shots out of the left woods from above but they won’t redirect balls all the way onto the

Putting surface due to the softer nature of the conditions the area directly right of the green has also been adjusted both raised and lowered at different times but generally tied into the grade of the putting surface it fades slowly into a shallow here near the 12th Fairway the

Green service and even the pond itself have been rebuilt several times due to flooding before the 1999 tournament both were raised one foot and the back left of the putting surface was extended to create a new hole location that almost no one shoots for for fear of going into

The pond and race Creek behind players can’t win The Masters on the 11th hole but they can lose it getting through the 11th cleanly on Sunday is a virtual mandate for taking the Green Jacket since 1990 only five players have bogey the hole and still won Ben Hogan

Allegedly said that if you ever saw his second shot at the 11 on the putting surface you’d know he pulled his approach his tactic was to play short and right and then make us part of the hard way the water feature added an outside psychological and penal aspect to 11 but

The hole wasn’t without strategy in this photograph taken in the 1970s you can see how wide the fway was at the top of the hill at 11 if you drove the ball down the right side you would have a direct shot into the depth of the green

With the bailout on the right if you drew the ball down the left side of the Fairway you could draw the ball into the green hit it straight through or even use the Mounds here to Ricochet a ball onto the front of the putting surface if the conditions were firm from the early

1950s until the late 1990s the 11th played 445 yards and was effectively the same whole year after year with only grading alterations around the green that began to change in 1999 when the te was extended 10 yards 1999 was also the first year the tournament introduced the

Second cut of rough which narrowed the Fairway to 45 yards across taking away the angles that many players tried to access with the t-shot though the scoring at the 11th had only marginally eased from 1989 to 2001 when it played to a stroke average of 4.19 Augusta National was becoming increasingly

Concerned about the distances players were driving the ball with good reason during the 2001 Masters chairman hoody Johnson and Consulting architect Tom FAO were watching play on 11 when a golf ball bounced down the Fairway and St just 94 yard from the green we thought somebody had chipped Out of the Woods

Johnson said but what they witnessed was Phil Mickelson’s drive a shot that traveled 361 yards leaving just a sand wedge to a green historically designed to be approached with a 3 four of five iron the desire to preserve the balance between the types of shots players had traditionally hid into the greens and

The surge in how far the golf ball was flying inspired the most significant Spate of alterations to Augusta National since the 1950s what came to be called The Tiger proofing of the course that the club had begun contemplating after Tiger Woods shot a then record 270 or 1800 par in

1997 leading up to the 2002 Masters the club lengthened the course to 7,270 yards from its previous distance of 6,985 yards an increase of 285 yards that specifically targeted several Par Four holes the 11th alone was stretched from 455 yard to 490 yards between 2002 and 2005 the added length at 11

Contributed to a jump and stroke average of over a tenth of a point to 4.3 shots per player but Augusta National wasn’t satisfied making good on hoody Johnson’s promise to be more aggressive and enforcing between the lines hitting something that was never a part of the course’s architectural makeup during the

Previous 70 years the club embarked on an added measure in 2004 to narrow the 11th Fairway by further planting 36 mature Pines along the right side of the hole the transplanted trees reduced the 11th Fairway to just 35 yards across nearly half of what it was in 1998 and

Drives that went to the right now ended up in the Pines sometimes yielding a shot to the green often requiring punch outs and occasionally resulting in broken clubs as Tiger Woods found out in 2007 in a Curious Case of inverse rewards drives that went extremely right could find this Alleyway between the

Newly planted Pines and the old far right edge of the Fairway and could actually find an open Alleyway here between the two sets of Pines where they could have a clear shot down to the green perhaps it was karmic Justice then that the pushed dry Woods hit during his

2019 Victory wasn’t stymied behind a tree but rather found the alleyway giving him an opening through which he could hit the green and make his par setting the table for the tournament defining drama that was about to unfold on 12 remember the same position used to be the edge of the

Fairway where many players attempted to place their drives in 2006 another round of course lengthening totaling 155 yards took place bumping Augusta National’s overall distance to 7,445 yards and the length of the 11th to 505 yards in just six Masters the course had expanded by 460 yards and the 11th had

Been stretched from 445 yard to 505 yards Augusta has always insisted that scoring totals don’t factor into their remodeling decisions but given the contortions the 11th has gone through it’s ID that special emphasis has been placed on keeping it one of the most difficult on the course from 2006 to

2020 the whole stroke average Rose slightly to 4.37 a reflection that the changes made in 2002 and 2006 were holding serve against the distance gains but for how long the overall winning scores at the masters from 2017 through 2021 averaged 13.4 Strokes under par the lowest scores in relation to par over a

5year stretch in the history of the tournament this on a course that played nearly 7,500 yards to the powers that wear the Green Jackets it was once again time to go to the bullpen and bring in the 11th hole to help put out the fire so prior to the 2022 Masters another 15

Yards of distance was added stretching 11 out to 520 yds and making it the longest par for on the course by 25 yds it was even 10 yds longer than the 13th a par five more remodeling was done on the right side of the Fairway the club

Removed the majority of those pine trees that they had planted in 2004 they did leave a small cluster here 240 yards from the tea on the right but those don’t really come into play they also left three solitary Pines farther down the Fairway starting at about 340 yards

Nobody intentionally tries to hit their ball over here but if they do there’s more of a chance for Recovery of punching a shot low and onto the green at least more so than when they were Pines so the Fairway plays wider now and is slightly more forgiving but players

Are still not trying to hit it to the right they’re trying to hit it in the middle of the Fairway which has been leveled out more than it used to be it used to slope from right to left now you get more of a level eye shooting down

Into the 11th green the right corner of the pond was also brought into the Fairway slightly further cutting off that front left hole location and narrowing the gap between the water and the Mounds on the right the immediate impact of these changes likely satisfied tournament officials in 2022 the hole

Played to a stroke average of 4.4 47 the highest total since 2016 and the fourth highest average in the previous 40 years more importantly the modifications ensured that for now 11th remains a terrifying landmine especially for players coming down the stretch on Sunday so that’s the long strange

Journey of Augusta National’s 11th hole and the many ways the club has attempted to fortify its design in real time against the continual onslaughts of the professional game a dance that’s never likely to stop and still despite the ever expanding string of te’s the inhale exhale of the Fairway space and the

Tinkering around the pond in green the 11th hole at Augusta National has remained one of the great second shot holes in golf and arguably the game’s most premium test of iron play nerve and willpower but no matter what adaptations happen in the future you can bet Augusta

National will do whatever it takes to protect that Distinction