Justin Rose, in the Masters hunt again, provides fresh fodder for Amen Corner
AUGUSTA, Ga. — Amen Corner is part of the music for Augusta National and the Masters Tournament. Again with feeling: Amen’s corner is a short poetic short of the approach on 11, all 12, tee shot on 13. Water hole, water hole, water hole. If you are trying to win the spring invitation here, your shorts there can be made or your day, week and life.
Recently – almost 70 years after Herbert Warren Wind coined the name Amen Corner – Adam Scott (in a wonderful interview with Golf Digest) referred to 9, 10, 11 and 12 as “the hard part of the lesson.” Most good golfers would agree! Think Greg Norman at 9 on a Sunday in 1996; Rory McIlroy at 10 on Sunday in 2011; Raymond Floyd on 11 in the 1990 playoffs; Jordan Spieth on the 12th in 2016.
When you walk into Scott’s “tough place,” with Amen Corner playing in your ears (it was the title of a song before it was a golf course), you can imagine the same stretch on the course, the same rhythm as Herb Wind’s first: approach to 9, all 10, tee shot at 11.
If only it had a name, and some history.
The par-4 9th green has such a steep slope that even with modern low balls you can have an approach shot pitch to the green, turn the putt and finish 30 yards short of the green. Over the green is even worse. Here comes 5.
The par-4 10th is an easy driving hole – until it isn’t. If you find yourself playing without pine needles and by using the pines on both sides of the fairway, you will do well to be within 10 feet of the hole in three shots. It smells like 5 from here.
The tee box of the par-4 11th hole is deep on the small range with no time margin, straight ball golf, driver in hand, for most. (It’s over 500 yards.) If you drive it in play you should have something short of a fairway. If you don’t, you are looking at another possibility 5.
To recap: three fouls on those three holes and you play that 15-shot stretch. There is no shame in playing those three holes in 12 shots, none at all. It’s not like there are any light bird apps out there.
Which brings us to Justin Rose, the 45-year-old English golfer who faced Rory McIlroy in a one-hole playoff at last year’s Masters. Rose, the clubhouse leader, was practicing putting on the green early Sunday night last year when McIlroy teed off on the 18th. This was on the Washington Road side of the clubhouse, on the opposite side of the course. There were very few people there; Rose’s agent, Mark Steinberg, was one of them. He heard a groan coming from above the clubhouse, he knew it meant that McIlroy had made bogey at the last and that Rose and McIlroy would soon start a playoff, each looking to win at Augusta for the first time. Rose is still looking.
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Rose birdied the 9th, 10th and 11th holes in 9 shots on Friday en route to a second-round 69, three under par on the par-72 hole course. Nine shots! Bird, bird, bird. The three-hole stretch that got him into trouble in this tournament is now in the middle. He is five years old in less than two rounds. Once again, there you are.
Rose was asked about stretching after her round and said:
“Given these conditions, when the fairways come out, you hit a good shot and you get a good angle on that 9th green, so I don’t see that being too difficult,” he said.
“Ten is just a nice hole, isn’t it?”
Looking, for sure.
“I think 11, where the pin was today, is a comfortable flag on the green. Back where you want to hit the ball. Any other pin, you have to play away from the flagstick, which makes it difficult.
But the way the holes played today, it was 9-iron, 9-iron, 7-iron.
Good, as the kids say.
You may know that Justin Rose is a horse guy. He loves horses, he has race horses, he knows the sport of horses.
You may know that many spectators here enter the gates, check the 9th green, make the downhill walk on the 10th and climb to the spot where they can see the tee shots that land on the 11th.
We give the name of this stretch, the approach to 9, the whole 10, tee shot on 11, a nod to Rose and his Friday game and his love of the song:
Clubhouse Turn.
If Rose wears green Sunday night, we’ll visit again.
Until then, this weekend.
Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at Michael.Bamberger@Golf.com.
