The Tragedy of Match Play: The 18th Hole
- Updated: September 23, 2021
Twitter/@knoxydiane
Perched atop the hill alongside the 18th green at Whistling Straits are 4 Adirondack chairs.
After our round, we just posted up in these chairs. For hours we just sipped beers and watched group after group of mediocre amateurs finish their round on this spectacular golf hole.
The only thing that could have made it better would be watching people who actually knew how to play golf.
Unfortunately, this dream situation may not realize its full potential this week.
There are certainly a long list of pros associated with match play.
It speeds up play. Blowup holes don’t cost someone a whole tournament. And sometimes we get to see Sergio pick up a putt that wasn’t conceded and forfeit the hole.
But there is an often unnoticed victim of these otherwise enjoyable events. The 18th hole.
The 18th hole.
Now, this may not be such a big deal if they were playing at your local muni where the last hole is just a means to an end.
But championship courses are different in that they are designed for thrilling finishes in the last few holes. Hell, some of them are actually designed and built for spectators to sit on the ground and watch the few holes like you’re in a stadium.
With match play, that all goes out the window. The number of holes played is dictated by how much of a shellacking is taking place in the match.
And the sad truth is only a fraction of the matches this week will see the last hole. And that’s just a damn shame.
Eighteen is a hole that I didn’t truly appreciate until I saw and walked it in person. It’s the first thing I saw when I set foot on the property.
In the words of the great Verne Lundquist, ‘Oh. My. Goodness.’
It plays a beastly 520 from the back tees into a fairway that runs out into the creek that runs along the property. The fairway kind of veers off to the left but it gets really narrow up there.
Going at the left fairway will require somewhere in the neighborhood of a 300-yard carry to cover the sea of bunkers and hit on a rope to avoid the creek. The sensible play is out to the right side of the fairway and short of the creek.
This will leave about a 180-200 yard approach. The approach shot is into a green shaped like a plus sign which could play like 4 completely different holes depending on where the pin is. The hole is just an absolute masterpiece and we are in for a treat in whatever matches do make it this far.
So during this week’s Ryder Cup, I’ll be pouring out some Milwaukee’s Best in honor of the undeserving victim of this thrilling match play format.
It deserves much more than the play and the coverage they will end up getting in this otherwise magnificent event. Here’s to hoping for some tight matches to shine some much-merited light on this beauty.
If not, well the other 17 holes are pretty sweet too. So we got that going for us, which is nice.
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