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The par-4 10th at Riviera Country Club is easily within range of all the players on the PGA Tour, with the green downhill and the hole checking in at just 315 yards on the scorecard. Each year during the PGA Tour’s Genesis Invitational, No. 10 appears to be the epitome of a short, drivable hole – ripe for the taking.
Except it isn’t.
The PGA Tour reports that during the 2021 Genesis, there were 373 total tee shots on No. 10, with 297 of those taking aim at the green or its surrounds. Of those, only five came to rest on the putting surface. That’s a 1.7-percent success rate, and Tour pros never really take on tee shots that offer those kinds of odds. If they did, they probably wouldn’t be on Tour long.
And that’s the genius of the 10th, designed by George C. Thomas and William P. Bell on the track that opened in 1927 in Pacific Palisades on the outskirts of Los Angeles. The whole place is genius, come to think of it: Riviera ranks No. 4 in California on Golfweek’s Best list of private courses, and it is No. 18 on Golfweek’s Best list of all classic courses built in the U.S. before 1960.
The StrackaLine yardage book for Riviera Country Club in Pacific Palisades, California, site of the PGA Tour’s Genesis Invitational (Courtesy of StrackaLine)
Even the pros sometimes struggle to decide how best to hit that tee shot and commit fully to it. It’s a quandary incited by the heavily sloping green, the cross bunkers, even a handful of palm trees. It’s a green that’s easy to miss from 100 yards, from 20 yards, from the front bunker, from the back bunker – it’s as much a Ping Pong table as a putting surface, and it’s not uncommon to see players go back and forth over the green on successive shots. Nowhere is precision more greatly demanded than on the likely pitch into No. 10, especially when the flag is in the back-right portion of the green. Trajectory, spin and distance control are all musts.
An array of…
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Source : yahoo
