TROON, Scotland — Like golf itself, a short par-3 hole simultaneously can fill you with both hope and dread.
Glory is just a successful wedge shot away, yet disaster — and its close cousin embarrassment — lurks just as expectantly.
This week at the Open Championship, toward the end of a long outward march along the coast at Royal Troon, players will be greeted by Hole No. 8: The Postage Stamp, perhaps the greatest short hole of them all.
Other wonderful one-shotters that come to mind are Augusta National’s No. 12 — the centre point of Amen Corner — and the island green No. 17 at TPC Sawgrass. But we dare say neither has quite the charm of the tiny Postage Stamp here on Scotland’s Ayrshire Coast.
Royal Troon features a classic links golf layout, where the front nine is a near-continuous march out along the coastline with the sea hard to your right and the back nine is a long trudge back toward the clubhouse, often into the breeze.
Near the end of the outward nine, the course zigs and zags slightly as golfers position themselves for the walk back. Tucked inside the zigging and zagging is a tiny golf hole you almost need to stumble upon or risk missing altogether: Meet the Postage Stamp.
At just 123 yards on the scorecard, the 8th hole could play as short as 99 yards this week at The Open. It’s the 18th handicap hole at Royal Troon, ostensibly the easiest on the course.
Try telling that to some of the world’s best golfers this week.
“Fun if you’re just playing with the boys, I think. I don’t know about for a tournament,” Xander Schauffele said. “Trying to win a major championship and you have a little hole like that that can mess your entire week up.”
Standing on the slightly elevated tee, the tiny green looks so close that a simple toss of the golf ball might do the trick. The hole received its name when 1887 and 1889 Open Champion Willie Park Jr. wrote in Golf Illustrated that it features “a pitching surface skimmed down to the size of a Postage Stamp.”
With a perfect view of the Ailsa Craig in the distance — a rocky island featuring micro-granite long-quarried to make curling stones — and a tiny-yet-inviting green straight in front of you, there would seem to be no more charming spot in the vast world of golf to hit a tee shot.
That is, until you see the five dark caverns standing guard down by the green.
“Two bunkers protect the left side of the green while a large crater bunker shields the approach,” writes Royal Troon in the course description. “Any mistake on the right will find one of the two deep bunkers with near vertical faces. There is no safe way to play this hole.”
The bunkers protecting the front right and left are traditional deep pot bunkers, whereas the one threatening a half-yard off the left edge of the putting surface is rectangular and positioned horizontally — aptly named the coffin bunker — its tiny confines not recommended for anyone suffering from claustrophobia.
On a course that features a 623-yard par-5 and 242-yard par-3, this tiny hole at the end of the property is sure to occupy and oversized spot in golfers’ minds this week.
“It’s a very simple hole, just hit the ball on the green. That’s it. Green good, miss green bad,” Tiger Woods said this week. “It doesn’t get any more simple than that.”
The 15-time major winner said the past two times he played the hole he hit a 9-iron and a pitching wedge, but also mentioned that he has hit as much as a 7-iron in the past, depending on the wind.
“It’s really hard,” Xander Schauffele said. “I played it for the first time today, so pretty fresh in my mind. Yeah, it’s really nice. Most of the holes we play are 255 yards. It’s kind of cool to have a hole that’s super scary that is that short and I think it’s going to provide a lot of entertainment if that wind picks up off the left.”
World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler finds the Postage Stamp refreshing in this oversized and overpowering age of golf.
“I get frustrated sometimes when the solution to distance is just making holes farther and farther, and then it only just encourages guys to try to hit the ball farther and farther and not worry as much about controlling your ball,” Scheffler said. “No. 8 is a good little way to almost step back in time and control your ball a bit more.”
That’s what the Open Championship offers each year: A chance to look back to the origins of the game and learn something. When doing so, we realize that many of the solutions to modern golf’s issues such as the distance debate as well as water and turf management have long been discovered.
Recognizing great holes such as the Postage Stamp and understanding that brown is beautiful are messages that need to be brought home to North American golfers.
“It’s an underrated skill for guys nowadays to be able to control your ball, and I think it’s something we need to encourage in our game, not just building golf courses longer and longer,” Scheffler said. “You can make a short hole with a small green and it’s pretty dang tough.”