Many famous courses have names for all their holes. The Old Course has The Road Hole, their 17th, which is built next to a road, literally. Their 10th is called Bobby Jones because he quit playing there in a fit of fury the first time he attempted to play the course. And the rest have names that perhaps meant something at the time the course opened.
Royal Troon has the Postage Stamp, the par 3, 8th hole, so named for its small green. But they also have Railway, the 11th, because the tracks, which are out of bounds, run next to the hole, and The Fox, which is the 12th, named after foxes that used to live there.
Its “nearly twin,” PGA West Stadium Course in La Quinta, has names for all the holes. The 17th, for instance, is called Alcatraz because it’s an island surrounded by rocks and water, like the infamous prison that once held some of the worst prisoners. It was supposedly impossible to escape from it, and it is supposedly hard to escape from the hole with any kind of a good score. The 16th hole at PGA West Stadium, the one with the 19-foot-deep bunker adjacent to the green, is called San Andreas after the San Andreas Fault, which is about 11 miles north of the course, across I-10.
Surely, TPC Sawgrass holes deserve names, and not just the names golfers utter while playing. For instance, we could call them the @#$%!X and %*!@$%! But it’s hard to distinguish symbols when a perfectly good word will do. You know, did that start with an % or a @?
So, let’s give this place some names, ones that can be said in polite company. You may come up with better ones yourself, and maybe next year we’ll have a name-the-hole contest.
No. 1 should definitely be Dean’s Dream for Deane Beman who had the idea to bring Pete and Alice Dye to build TPC Sawgrass in the first place. It’s a pleasant looking hole until you try to play it. But it does look nice, and it gets people off the tee and into the bunker waiting out there on the right side of the hole. An alternate name could be Miguel for Miguel Angel Jimenez who once made an 8 there. If you’re a pro, an 8 will ruin your day, especially if that’s your first hole.
No. 2, we’ll be generous and call it Recovery because if you miss the fairway on your tee shot or second shot, you’ll spend your time recovering from those errors until pretty soon you card a 10 like Fred Couples once did. He clattered balls into the woods. You won’t be any happier than he was if you do the same thing. You can hit the woods on the first shot and if you do, there’s a chance you’ll hit more trees on the second. Unpleasant, to say the least.
No. 3 is a pretty little par 3 we’re going to call Everything because it has it all. It has water. It has sand. It has a two-level green with a sculpted edge that might repel your ball into either the sand or water. It’s kind of like an everything bagel where you might want to watch out for the onions. Ben Curtis once made a 7 there. He wasn’t any happier about it than you would be.
No. 4 has to be called Railroaded because that’s the first time you see the wooden railroad ties on the course. And they aren’t cute little railroad ties. They are sturdy railroad ties fronting the green, separating it from the water. The wood is no more than eight inches from the putting surface, so shots have to go beyond that bulkhead or your golf ball clanks into the ties and then into the water. It’s a horrible sound when that happens. While they have softened the slope from the right side of the green to the water, you can still putt your ball off the green into the drink without a lot of effort. A pro no longer on the TOUR named Phillip Hancock once took a 12 there, and that’s probably one reason he’s no longer on the TOUR. But at least he’s infamous.
No. 5 we’d like to name after Scott Piercy who made a 9 there. The hole’s a par 4. It took him seven shots to get to the green, and he started by hitting into the water, which is so out of play no one ever really knows it’s there. You see the bunker yawning in view, but water? You really have to try hard to find it. But instead of calling it Piercy, which really wouldn’t be fair to him, we’re going to call it Deception because it doesn’t look that hard, but scores over par just happen. At lot. People flinch at the wrong time and end up in an unseen pot bunker or up against a tree beyond the green. It’s an easy bogey hole, that’s for sure.
No. 6’s name has to be Palms. This should come as no surprise because there is a herd of palm trees on both sides of the fairway guarding the green and you can’t shoo them out of the way. They are a bit like the old-fashioned pinball game bumpers where you can get a lucky bounce and rack up a bunch of points. Only in this case, a low score is what you want, not a high score. You do not want to hit the palms because that will likely carom your ball into some kind of swale or sandy place and cost you a shot. Pete Dye supposedly thought this was the most lovely hole on the course. But we all know Pete was a little beyond crazy. (And we loved him for it.)
No. 7 is now such a pretty hole from the tee. There’s that vast expanse of fairway out there. But nestled up to it on the left side, for yards and yards in the landing area, is sand. The sand is supposed to save you from going into the water, well really a lake now, a fairly new addition, which is beyond the sand. And so, Lake is the name of this hole to go along with its expansive and recently redesigned look.
The 8th, man, that’s a hard hole. It just sits there and double dares you to hit the green. And so that’s going to be the name of this hole: Double Dare. They keep pushing the tee back, back, back, back as Chris Berman used to say on his MLB recaps on Sports Center. So it’s longer, but nobody takes away pot bunkers and swales from around the green. And the green is super slanted from back to front and falls off to the sides as well. The ball has a remarkable tendency to roll off of it no matter where it lands. Maybe the name should switch to Duck’s Back, but that would be harder to explain, at least until you try to hit it.
The 9th. Ah yes, it only seems like a breather from the tee. You can’t see the semi-burn that cuts across it right about where a drive could land. But you can see the big oak tree that blocks any approach to the green. And now they can make it as long as 600 yards? So, we’re going to call this one Impossible Dream because you dream you could hit over the skinny, water-filled ditch that crosses the fairway at about 325 yards from the back tee. And maybe one or two guys can. But that hazard is now in play if it’s 300 to 340 off the tee. It’s not a layup anymore. Years ago, Tim Clark made a 10 there. The next year, he won THE PLAYERS. Go figure.
It's time to take a breather in this naming business. Mainly to think of which hole should be named after Alice Dye. Now, she was involved in the 17th. She didn’t dig it out personally with a shovel or anything, but when Pete started excavating in that area, he found the best sand, which they used for the top of fairways, in the location around the 17th hole. He kept digging and it turned into a big hole. So, Alice suggested they make it an island like the one at the Ponte Vedra Inn’s Ocean course. Well, here we are 40 some odd years later with people still swearing at the hole. I thought about Hit It Alice hole because I’m sure Alice Dye would not have had a problem getting to that green, even from the men’s tees. But Alice Cooper kind of likes hearing that from his buddies. Personally, I’m surprised anybody found any sand anywhere on this island, except at the beach, and Pete wasn’t digging there.
Ah, the 10th hole. It was supposed to be similar to the 1st so that when guys were playing split tees in the first two rounds, one side of the field wouldn’t have a big disadvantage compared to the other. So, this one’s easy. Doppelganger. What did you take on Doppelganger, Charlie? A sandwich and a beer, since you’re asking. The small green and the angle of the dangle off the tee make it a challenge, but it’s not an impossibly hard hole.
The 11th ratchets the challenge up a little and kind of reminds me of that Abba song, “Take a Chance on Me,” because that’s what everybody is faced with on this hole. You can sing it while you figure out your strategy. Plop a drive out there. If it’s too far and right, you have to hoist one either over water and sand to the green on your second shot, if you dare, or you can chicken out and go for the left side of the hole and then run your third up the green. So, you see what we mean by Chance.
The 12th has changed, as you probably know, from the original 12th hole, which was a dogleg left, short par 4. It’s now what is called a drivable par 4. However, that doesn’t mean the green is easy to hit or hold. It doesn’t mean most players will approach it as one shot hole or that most will try to drive the green. There will be differences of opinion on this one, and because of that, this hole is going to be called Argument. You think you can get there. Your caddie doesn’t. You see the flag. Your caddie sees your ball rolling into the water on the left side of the green. There’s no agreement. It’s not quite the Argument Shop on Monty Python where the customer is arguing with the owner because the parrot is dead, deceased, left this mortal coil, but there will be differences of opinion.
On 13, the par 3 that backs up to the Marriott, there is bound to be a little bit of luck involved in where the ball ends up each day. Sometimes it cozies up to the hole, and sometimes it can roll and roll and roll back into the water. Nearly anything can happen here. If you don’t believe me, ask Andrew McGee or Gary Koch. They both had 9s on the hole once upon a time. That’s like playing two extra par 3s! For that reason, this one is getting a name that suits: Treachery. It has everything but the pirate bandana and knife to put between your teeth.
Now we come to one of the two holes that usually play toughest. The 14th. It has ruined scores. Lost tournaments. Shredded hopes. In 2013, leading the tournament, Tiger Woods put his 3-wood drive into the water in front of the tee. Tiger Woods! If he can be tricked into doing that, what about everybody else? Vijay Singh had a chance to win THE PLAYERS, that is until he hit a drive at the 14th. Oops. He ended up with triple bogey and without a PLAYERS trophy. As much as he practiced here, you’d think it would not have happened to him, but it did. Neither Woods nor Singh would call this hole anything at all nice. Heartbreaker seems to suit.
The 15th hole is often overlooked because it’s between the horrible 14th and the immensely scorable 16th. Yet, the tee shot has to fit between a narrow slot that is framed by a lot of trees. Then it makes a severe right turn so the green isn’t visible from the tee. As yet, we haven’t named a hole after Alice Dye and this is the time. This is a momma bear of a hole. Not too hard. Not too easy. So, it’s going to be Wonderland for “Alice in Wonderland.”
Ah, the 16th. Where birdies and eagles go to play. Where Fred Couples started his eagle/birdie run to win in 1996. Where Davis Love III whacked his ball out of pine straw onto the green. Sure, Couples and Love had a heyday there, but a lot of golfers end up with a bad bounce over the green into the water. Or with a bad second shot that skirts the right edge of the green a little too closely and splat! Richard Zokol once had a 10 there. That’s how user-friendly the 16th can be if it feels like it. The hole name? Risk. No need to explain why.
And now, the loveable, hated, despised, detested 17th. The Island Green. We’d like to call it Chomp for the alligator that lives in the lake, but people have been calling it the Island Green for so long that nobody will recognize it as anything else. Deane’s Nightmare isn’t bad either, but again Island Green wins out. Pitch N Putt is descriptive, but nobody wants to name this thing anything other than the name it has gotten over time. The Island Green, once and for all. Could have called it Tway for Bob Tway and his 12 there, but people are just not going to recognize that as the name of this meanspirited little clump of grass. Island Green, it is. Or even Island, for short.
Finally, one of the hardest holes on the course, which usually trades off with the 14th. It’s — ta da! — the 18th. The tee shot has to be squeezed into a fairway that’s slanting away from the golfer. If he’s lucky, his drive doesn’t go into the trees on the right. There’s a choice, in names, really. It could be Splash, to memorialize Jerry Pate’s victory in 1982. But it could just as easily be Dive, Dive, Dive. For now, we are going with Splash, but you can convince us that it needs to go the other way.
Now aren’t those better than just the second hole? Or the 11th? We think so.
Maybe next year, we can start naming the hazards, but it’s doubtful we’ll come up with anything as interesting as the ones at The Old Course at St. Andrews. They have names like the Principal’s Nose. Coffin. Hell. Spectacles. Strath. Road. And more. Each one has some kind of a story that goes with it. We may not be that lucky.
