Today's Golf Digest "Hole of the Day" is the 11th at Brookline (also known as the 9th hole of the US Open/Composite course). Here's the picture - which is really quite awful, but I'll link to it anyway:
I've played this hole many times, and I certainly can't think of any hole like it. Just beyond the thin strip of hay-colored grass on the left is a 20-foot drop down a rock face (with tangly shrubs at the bottom). The fairway extends to the left, out of the picture, rolling and bumping and getting narrower and narrower: trees immediately to the left of the fairway, rough to the right until you get to the rock face. At its narrowest, the fairway is only about 12-15 yards wide; then it gets down to what is essentially a dead-flat floodplain, crossed by a creek at the 150-yard mark, with plenty of rough on both sides of a tram-line fairway. Then, about 70-80 yards short of the green, the fairway ends, and the hole rises abruptly to a relatively small and severely sloping green guarded by the four bunkers you can see in the picture plus one directly beyond the green.
The hole is extremely interesting to me for several reasons:
--The hole is immune to advances in technology up to a certain point, at which instant its resistance is immediately and utterly broken. If you can carry the rockface - and we're probably talking about 280-300 yards, albeit downhill - the fairway widens appreciably, and the only hazard for not reaching the fairway is rough. Anything short of that, though, and the choice is between a layup into the relatively wide fairway short of the gap, and a drive down a progressively narrowing bottleneck that dares to reach a flat lie from which the green can be fetched in two. For the very longest players, I think the line of technology has been breached; for the rest of us, it remains a fascinatingly strategic hole.
--How many great holes do you know have 100 yards of boring, dead-flat, tramline fairway? Not many, I daresay. And yet, the creek crossing the fairway - which shouldn't come into play at ALL, under ideal circumstances, is a perfectly placed hazard if a weak player mishits his drive or a longer player finds the rough or trees off the tee. The choice between laying up safely to 170-190 (uphill) from the green and trying to carry the creek to get within no more than 140 of the green has foiled me many, many times...
--The green contours are perfect: the slope is effectively from front-left to back-right, which means even the shortest approach shots have to be judged with the first bounce (i.e. the ground game) in mind. And for a relatively short par 5, anyone going for the green in two has to shape his shot ideally (or get lucky) to hold the surface and not face an awkward chip with his third. Being below the hole is a HUGE advantage when putting, as well.
Apart from all that, the hole is drop-dead beautiful, especially from behind the green at the rock face and beyond - in autumn, with the leaves changing colors, this hole IS New England for me. I certainly feel safe in guessing that there isn't another hole like it in existence, and in predicting that another one just like it will never be built...
Cheers,
Darren