Riviera Country Club is among my favorite golf courses in the world. I just ranked it as my No. 1 course among annual PGA Tour stops.
But I truly don’t understand what is happening with the par-3 fourth hole.
Architect George Thomas’ Redan-style hole was recently lengthened nearly 40 yards from 236 to 273 yards ahead of this week’s Genesis Invitational.
Nope. I hate this.
I know par is just a human construct—more on this in a moment—but I don’t really understand the point of this change.
A hard hole gets even longer for no reason
A Redan is a classic template hole born at North Berwick in Scotland. The point, generally speaking, is to challenge players by asking them to hit a longer club into a 45-degree-angled green with a large slope that funnels the ball toward the middle of the green.
Any Redan makes more sense when conditions are firm but that can be a tough ask in February where rainy days are more likely in Southern California.
This hole has been among the harder par-3s on the PGA Tour for a long time. It was the third-hardest hole on the course the last time the Genesis was played at Riviera.
There’s a good reason why that’s the case. If players carry their tee shots to the green, it’s likely they will find themselves over the green. If players carry their tee shots a little too short, the sticky kikuyu surrounds tend to stop balls in their tracks.
On a great golf course, this is not a particularly great hole. You could successfully argue it’s the worst at Riv. Ben Hogan once called it “the greatest par-3 in America.” I named my dog after Hogan but he might have missed the mark on this one.
Players were hitting the green just 15 percent of the time when the tee was at 236 yards, an insanely low rate for Tour pros coming into the green with long irons.
Difficulty is great. I love difficulty. But this is a hole that has been difficult in a boring, kind-of-a-crapshoot way for many years. When you have 15 percent of Tour players hitting the green, that feels like a signal that something is off from a design perspective.
Now let’s push the tee back about 40 yards? What?
“I actually think it’s a horrible change,” Rory McIlroy said. “Well, like 15 percent of the field hit the green last time when it was played at its original yardage at 230. Like, if you want it to be a 275-yard par-3, you have to change the apron leading up onto the green.
“It can’t be kikuyu. It has to be another type of grass that can help you run it onto the green because again, in the right conditions, you try to fly that ball on the green with a 3-iron, it’s going to land, it’s going to finish up on the fifth tee box. That’s sort of what I mean by why it’s not a great change.”
OK, they aren’t playing it all the way back every round—but you are inevitably asking more guys to hit fairway wood (or maybe a mini driver) into this green.
The rationale is that players will be coming in with lower trajectories so they can run the ball up to the green easier. There is a bigger shoulder on the right side of the green that is supposed to push balls down toward the green more.
But the theory of it is different than the reality.
“It’s too soft, unfortunately, to have a lot of control to say, ‘Man, I’m going to play a tight 5-iron and run it up,'” Collin Morikawa said. “I think a lot of us play it left to chip uphill, but with a 3-wood in hand, that cart path on the left, honestly, comes into play because the dispersion just gets that much bigger.
“I think it’s just a very long par-3. There’s not a lot of thought to it other than just kind of hitting the green and moving on, unfortunately.”
Bingo.
As I’ve talked about in the past, lengthening golf courses is the most brain-dead form of challenging elite golfers, a decision that can have consequences on recreational golfers. It’s like baseball reconfiguring its stadiums to push the home-run fence back.
And lengthening an already difficult par-3 is even worse.
But isn’t par just a number?
The counter argument here is that par is just a concept.
A golfer’s job is to get the ball in the hole in the least number of shots as possible. Whether it’s a par-2 or a par-7 doesn’t matter. Everyone plays the same hole.
If you made the fourth hole at Riviera a par-4, wouldn’t it be the same thing?
Yes and no.
Yes, it wouldn’t change the hole. The lowest score still wins.
But when you have a par-3 that was designed as a par-3 and is this long, you are basically just asking guys to slap something up near the green and try to get up and down.
There is virtually no strategy involved and there is almost no hope of getting the ball close.
There also isn’t really any danger involved with the hole. It was designed as a par-3 with a ton of space around the green. The primary hazard is that it’s a long hole and controlling distance on that long a shot is difficult. We’re left with a chipping contest to see who makes par.
Now let’s contrast that with the famous par-4 10th at Riviera.
You could, in theory, call that a par-3 given how every player in the field can reach the green with their tee shot.
The thing is, there is strategy to the hole. There is danger to the hole.
Almost every player goes for it—but what line they take is a differentiator. It’s basically impossible to get the ball close off the tee. You have to hit your tee shot into the proper section and then get up and down. If you don’t, you might end up in one of the death spots around the green. You have a real opportunity to make a bogey (or higher). That’s how it was designed.
If you made the fourth hole a par-4, nobody would ever make a bogey.
If you made the 10th hole a par-3, nobody would ever make a birdie.
That doesn’t really make sense, right?
It’s not so much the par as it is the intention of the design.
Par-3s this long don’t make sense
Name every great par-3 in the world.
The 12th at Augusta. The eighth at Royal Troon. The 11th at St Andrews. The seventh at Pebble.
The majority of them are shorter than average. They are great because of their design features, not their length.
Of course, there are some really strong long par-3s in the world. I’m thinking of the 16th at Royal Portrush or the 16th at Carnoustie.
But even those par-3s are capped at around 245 yards. And, as we saw during the Open Championship last year at Portrush, plenty of players could still make birdie around Calamity Corner.
I just think that when you back up a par-3 into that fairway wood range—some pros need to hit driver on Oakmont’s 289-yard sixth hole—you are basically saying that the hole’s main defense is length. And it’s just not very entertaining.
Great short par-4s are built to provide a razor-thin dividing line between taking three, four or five strokes.
We see that each year at TPC Scottsdale’s 17th. It provides that dividing line.
A long, boring par-3 built on length alone doesn’t provide that.
This is not even mentioning that brutally long par-3s have to be played by mere mortals the other 51 weeks per year. They are even less fun and interesting when you’re asking a 15-handicapper to chop a driver up near the green and figure it out.
In closing, extremely long par-3s like what we are seeing at Riviera are a crock of horseshit.
Agree? Disagree? Let me know below in the comments.
Top Photo Caption: The fourth hole at Riviera was lengthened for no good reason. (GETTY IMAGES/Paul Mounce)
Hervé
4 months ago
Is Par really the point here? I think there are three ways to look at it, whether from a Pro, amateur or a viewer stand-point. From a Pro, tournament, stand-point, PAR has close to no meaning, and the only thing that matters is whether you played better or worse than your competitors. When most tournaments end up at -10 to -20 under par, it is clear that par is just an arbitrary number. Much more relevant is the fact that many tournaments end up with too many players within one or two strokes. Does this yield the best player as the winner? Not sure. So back to the point, which is that you want to make the holes more selective between players. In this case, it is interesting that the longer hole does not necessarily favor the long hitters, for a change, but probably more the accurate hitter that will hit the right spot for his second shot, and then delivers on his second shot. I am not arguing whether this is the right way to do it or not, but if it helps separate the players, I think it has some value. I am sure there are plenty of ways to achieve the same goal, but I don’t think that whether or not the length is right for a par 3 really matters in this case.