A spectacular 16th hole in the Jack Nicklaus design at Muirfield Village.
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In the second round of the Memorial a year ago, Jason Day's tee shot at Muirfield Village's watery par-3 16th missed just short of the right and went under the green.
Day, who is the member for Muirfield, was not happy with the result.
Less than being excited is something else, too.
“Stupid pit bull,” he muttered, a zing picked up by the Golf Channel's microphone.
As it turned out, legendary course designer and tournament host, Jack Nicklaus, was in the booth helping to call the action.
“Did you say stupid hole?” Nicklaus said.
The words hung in the air before Nicklaus laughed.
“Can we kill the volume?” broadcaster Terry Gannon joked.
More laughter.
“No, I think you might be right,” Nicklaus said.
Indeed, Day was not the first player to criticize the 16th. Earlier that day, Nicklaus had lunch with Rory McIlroy and Jordan Spieth, and the par-3 was a hot topic of conversation.
“Jordan says, what a bad hole,” Nicklaus recalled during a visit to his Friday booth last year. “Well, I listen to that. You know, maybe is something a terrible pit. So how do I make it better? My whole goal here is to have the best 18 holes that I can have, as I said at the beginning, tight, fast and fair. No one will complain about that. But if it is unfair and too difficult, then they have a problem. Like I said, I listen to that, I react, and no golf course is flawless.”
The problem with 16 was that there weren't enough places to stay: It was very challenging to hold. As Spieth said after his first round last year, “It's a 203-yard fairway with a tight green that runs away from you on both sides and has one shelf to hit.”
That led to a shockingly low green percentage. In the second round last year, of the 118 players on the field, only 30 (or 25.42%) hit the green. The next round was not so easy, where of the 66 players who did well, only 28.79% hit the green. Over the course of the week, only 32% of shots found the putt, making it the second hardest green to hit on the course, which is very unusual for a par-3.
Nicklaus studied the data, and that, he said this week, is where it hit him. “I always say, 'Maybe it's not embarrassing for them, maybe it's embarrassing for me.
“So I started trying to figure out the best way to replace that hole without ruining it, and I came up with it — we came up with moving the toys about 30 yards. Since that place was no longer our place of care, we could not move the tees to that place. It gave us a little hole for the wind to come down, not so much across the water, but above the water. I said, 'Well, you know, that front house, a lot of balls can be brought from there or we can give – I can give them to the front part of the green.'
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“So, basically, I gave the players a short turn of the green and the front half of the green, but I left the last two-thirds of the green the same as before — I didn't change it at all. So, that means now you can go ahead and play a shot and get the ball to the front of the green easily, you can get it there where you're going to maybe have a 20-, 30. -foot putt for birdie, and that's fine. I think most people would have been very happy last year to go with 3.
“But if you want to challenge the hole and challenge the pin position back left or back right or center left, you're going to have to put the ball a little further on the green, and you can leave it short of the pin. , take a long putt, okay, or you can challenge it. Therefore, I wanted not to remove the hole, but I also wanted to make it so that there could be a real rescue.”
The players (so far!) seem to agree. Xander Schaufelle called the hole “just right now,” adding that by removing the right-front landing, players can now “defend as much as you'd like without putting up like a 50-yard shot.” So I think you're going to see a lot of balls end up in that small area, especially those two front pins.”
Viktor Hovland said the wider part of the green was more acceptable from the tee but the large bunker to the right of the green felt deep to him. “On the right back pin, that's a solid shot,” he said.
Collin Morikawa noted that the area where the lower right house used to live is now a river but “it's not as big as I thought it would be, so you can put it or rub it on the green.” He added: “It is still very difficult. You're still hitting a 7-iron, 6-iron, 5-iron, depending on the wind, to smaller, greens that don't have much depth. Even with the angle movement, it's still a tough game. You can't get away with a bad gun out there.”
That much proved true in the first round and a half this week. On Thursday – with the right front pin – less than 40% of the 73-player field hit the green. On Friday – with the front left pin dangerously close to the water – only 8 of the 37 players (21.62%) who finished the hole as of this writing found a putt from the tee.
However, players are coming up and down in numbers. Last year, the hole played, on average, 0.364 strokes per par, making it the second strongest hole. This year, the average score is still slightly above average, at 0.019. Ten holes play a lot.
Mission accomplished? Let's give the players a few more rounds to mix it up.
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