Amen Corner: Where The Masters Is Lost..and Won

There’s so much to enjoy this week at The Masters as our favorite major plays out on our most revered and familiar Augusta National course. One of the extra bonuses the Augusta National Members offer us is their bonus viewing coverage on Masters.com.

I could watch Amen Corner (holes 11,12,13) and the exciting par five fifteenth and par three sixteenth all day long. And they allow us to do just that with live on line broadcasts of Amen Corner along with the fifteenth and sixteenth.

Long before the broadcast coverage starts on ESPN at 3:00pm we can stream plenty of action on some of the most memorable and hazardous holes on the course. Many Masters winners have been decided on these holes with Jordan Spieth’s meltdown on twelve being one of the most recent.

Adam Schupak of the New York Times details the trials and tribulations each golfer faces as they are confronted with Golden Bell, the seemingly innocent 155 yard par three twelfth hole.

The 12th has a scoring average of 3.28, which ranks as the fourth-hardest on the course. Why such consternation? That’s because the shot over water is to a green that measures 3,200 square feet, or nearly half the size of the average green at Augusta. It is 105 feet wide, but at its shallowest point 30 feet deep. Go long and you have to deal with azaleas, pines and a pair of bunkers. Short of the green is guarded by a bunker in the middle and Rae’s Creek, the water hazard that flows through Amen Corner, the name the writer Herbert Warren Wind coined to describe the club’s 11th through 13th holes. Adding to the uncertainty in club selection — anywhere from a 6-iron to a pitching wedge — is the swirling wind that nudges balls in all directions.

Sergio Garcia on Golden Bell in 2017

Indeed, Spieth joined an esteemed list of golfers whose balls came to rest at the bottom of Rae’s Creek. Gene Sarazen, winner of the 1935 Masters, deposited two balls into the water in 1952, made an 8 and withdrew from the tournament. In 1959, the defending champion, Arnold Palmer, had a triple bogey at No. 12, allowing Art Wall Jr. to win the title. Greg Norman also found the water in 1996, made double bogey and blew a six-stroke lead to Nick Faldo. And then there was the plight of Tom Weiskopf, who splashed five balls into Rae’s Creek in 1980 and made a 13, the highest score ever recorded on the hole.

I’ll have whatever coverage is airing early on my television but I’ll really be glued to my laptop as I stream Amen Corner and find my self wincing along with those golfers that contend with the most exciting hole on the course.