The agony and ecstasy of Augusta’s fabled 12th hole
Jordan Spieth and caddie Michael Greller made the 50-step walk from the 11th green to the 12th tee at Augusta National Golf Club before his playing partners had finished putting out Friday, wanting extra time to assess the situation spread out in front of them.
They both pulled out yardage books and flipped to the page for “Golden Bell,” the yellow flowering shrub that is the namesake of the par-3, 155-yard hole and the centerpiece of Augusta National’s fabled Amen Corner. Independently, they walked back from a sprinkler head to the tee, then did the math in their head to get the proper distance. Both didn’t need to do it, but they did anyway. Just to make sure.
Spieth looked at the tops of the Georgia pines that rim the hole, looked at the yellow flag on the green, looked at the ripples in Rae’s Creek, looked left at the flag on 11. He reached into his bag, pulled out a 9-iron, set up behind the ball and swung.
The ball rose into the milky sky, tracking toward the middle pin placement, began its descent … and caught the top lip of the front bunker, trickling back into the powdery sand.
Spieth stood there for a moment, club in his left hand, shoulders slumped, disbelief etched across on his face. Then he bent at the waist.
He had the same reaction a day earlier on the 12th green, bending at the waist in utter incredulity after a 21-foot putt stopped on the right lip and just hung there, teasing him, taunting him, refusing to drop.
The 12th at Augusta.
Golden Hell.
“I hit a good shot today, got a good game plan on it,” Spieth said of his only bogey in a 4-under round that moved him into a tie for fourth place at the Masters’ midpoint, two strokes behind leader Justin Rose. “It’s just a matter of which wind you get, if it ends up landing the right distance or not.”
It is the shortest hole on the course, and the most terrifying. The most inviting, and most confounding. The most
beautiful, and most ominous.
If Augusta National is golf’s cathedral, this is its Sistine Chapel. Michaelangelo painted the ceiling in Rome; God splashed color on the backdrop at 12, azaleas and camellias and dogwoods and magnolias mixed with a burnt red Japanese maple tree.
It sits at the lowest point of the course, in a natural amphitheater with the shoeprint-shaped green as its stage, with the Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson bridges as picture frames, with Rae’s Creek reflecting with its magnificence, with the gallery assembled on a bank behind the tee box, with gasps of past failures seemingly echoing through the pines.
“I’ve seen that hole cripple many a man,” three-time champion Gary Player told ESPN a few years ago, “many a man.”
Spieth knows. It wrecked his chances to become only the tournament’s fourth repeat champion in 2016. Leading on Sunday as he walked the 50 steps from 11th green to 12th tee, he hit one ball into Rae’s Creek, then another, then another, then turned to Greller and said, “Buddy,
it seems like we’re collapsing.” Many a man.
On his first official round at the course he created, the legendary Bobby Jones put his tee shot in Rae’s Creek.
Arnold Palmer lost the 1959 Masters when he put two balls in the water on Sunday, had a triple-bogey 6 and blew a five-shot lead. Robert Streb was so intimidated by the 12th here Thursday that he shanked his tee shot toward the 13th fairway — the dreaded hosel rocket straight out of your local muni. But he shouldn’t feel bad; Jack Nicklaus did it in 1964, bogeyed and finished second.
Two-time Masters champion Bubba Watson once took a 10 on 12. Kevin Na birdied it Friday but took a 10 here in 2013.
Tiger Woods won in 2019 when four contenders all got wet there in the final round. The following year, he had a 10, too, his worst single-hole score as a professional.
Tee shot in the water. Drop. Pitch rolled back in the water. Drop. Pitch into the back bunker. Sand shot skidding across the green into the water. Drop in the bunker. Sand shot onto the fringe.
Two putts.
A septuple bogey.
That’s not the record for futility at Golden Bell. Tom Weiskopf, a four-time runner-up at Augusta, once took a 13. A nonuple bogey.
There have been only two holes-inone in the Masters, and none since Curtis Strange in 1988.
“The possibility of such a huge discrepancy in score makes that hole so great,” says Phil Mickelson, who has three green jackets and might have had a fourth had he not rinsed one there in 2009, “from a 2 to … we have seen large numbers.”
It shouldn’t be that hard, really, not for the world’s best golfers. It’s a 9-iron, maybe a pitching wedge for the tour’s more robust hitters. And it’s a relatively flat green, at least compared to the wildly undulating surfaces on Augusta National’s other holes.
The problem is the wind, and reading it. Because the 12th hole sits at the lowest part of the property, the wind whips down the surrounding hillsides and swirls around, like water in a toilet bowl.
It was windless when Spieth first stepped on the tee Friday. Then you could hear the pines rustle above, and a puff of breeze ruffled the sleeves of his blue shirt. It felt like it was coming from behind them. But the trees behind the green were swaying toward them. And the flag on 12 pointed right. And the flag on the adjacent 11th green pointed left.
“If you’re lucky enough to play Augusta once and the wind’s blowing, you’ll have no clue,” Fred Couples told Golf.com in an analysis of Golden Bell. “But, really, that’s true even for tour players, no matter how many times you’ve played it.”
Pick too little club, you’re in the creek. Pick too much, you’re in the back bunker with a downhill lie — or worse, the azalea bushes — and a green sloping away from you toward the creek.
Now add Sunday’s seductive pin placement, six paces off the right edge and its closely manicured hillside that sends any shot not perfectly placed on a slow, tortuous march to a watery grave.”
Golden Bell, ringing again.