GWD_MAY_16

MY FAVOURITE HOLE
17th, Royal Melbourne
By Geoff Ogilvy
The 2006 US Open champion chooses a tricky hole in his
native Australia that tests every part of your game.
17TH, WEST COURSE,
ROYAL MELBOURNE
PAR 4, 439 YARDS
It’s textbook strategy – a dog-leg
left with negative cambers so it
rolls away from the corner.
You’ve got to hit a really good
drive to get it on the inside of the
dog-leg to be able to attack the
green, which is protected on the
right with good bunkering. The
green is in such a beautiful setting.
It tests your shotmaking ability because the ideal
way to play it is to hit a draw off the tee and a fade
for your second shot. It’s quite a fast, sloping green.
For an average player it’s a very wide fairway and
you can bail right off the tee, bail left on the
approach, chip it on, two putt, and make five for
the rest of your life without any problems. For a
great player to make a four, it’s really hard.
It’s one of those holes where your strategy
progressively changes. You hit it in the left
bunker off the tee and you make a five. You tell
yourself you won’t do that again next time, so
you go way right. Then you gradually go closer
and closer to that bunker on the inside of the
dog-leg again as you get more confident. It’s the
perfect fairway bunker because it makes you take
it on. It makes you play the shot you don’t want
to play. The great holes do that.
There are probably prettier holes in golf –
there are prettier holes at Royal Melbourne – but
it ticks every box, so I think it’s perfect.
www.royalmelbourne.com.au
© ILLUSTRATION GARY LEES
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