Pebble's 14th And Chipping Areas **

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The Bryce Molder and Paul Goydos' 14th hole follies during Sunday's AT&T final round raises a few interesting questions heading into this summer's U.S. Open at Pebble Beach.

  • Why wasn't this green ever expanded to the original size? Nick Faldo nailed it on the telecast: many of the issues with the green and hole are brought on by the lack of versatility in hole locations, all due to the shrinkage of the lower right area.
  • Will the chipping area that appears to have been expanded to the left side of the green be reduced for the Open? After all, if the hole induced these antics in soft AT&T pro-am conditions, what will happen when the course bakes out this June? The prime-time finish may be on Monday.

  • Should there be any chipping area around this green? I personally have always thought it looked contrived when it was just the area to the rear of the green. But after seeing Sunday's play, while it may look better I don't know if it greatly enhances the architecture. If there were more options than simply trying to hit the upper shelf and the chipping area impacted the golfer's thinking, it might work. But it just seems to be exacerbating the difficulty of the hole.

The Google aerial of the green shows what the chipping area used to look like before this more recent incarnation was expanded to the left of the top shelf:

For what it's worth, No. 14 played as Pebble's 3rd toughest hole at 5.187. There were no eagles, 37 birdies, 127 pars, 51 bogies, 6 double bogies and 4 others. No other hole had more than one "other."

Goydos talked about his nine after the round:

Q. There was one tough hole.

PAUL GOYDOS: Which one might that have been?

Q. That was No. 14.

PAUL GOYDOS: My second nine this year on a Sunday. How about that? The other one was on a par-3. So I'm a 17 hole player, I guess, on Sundays.

Q. You played well up to that point, what --

PAUL GOYDOS: No, we had hung in there. We were struggling. The golf course is playing a little harder. Playing the ball down made a big difference on a mud ball. Had to be less aggressive.
But was hanging in there pretty good, yeah.

Q. You tried to hit a tough shot at --

PAUL GOYDOS: No, my third shot I was just trying to -- actually, we (indiscernible) thought to hit it off the green. You know, we were trying to hit the ball long, just long and right, which I thought it would have been pretty good. 7-iron for 139 and didn't fly far enough. I guess I needed a 6-iron there.

So we were actually -- I might go -- I think if I can make 5 there every time for the rest of my life I would obviously.

I was trying to actually hit enough club to make sure we got it kind of back on into the green. Even that little chipping area behind the green wouldn't have been horrid. The ball just didn't go as far as we had planned.

Q. Then you --

PAUL GOYDOS: Then I tried to play safe on the next one, and I didn't catch it very sold and I kind of chunk-holed it, when it would've been much better the skinny-push it.
Then I went down the hill and stayed down the hill and chipped it on the green and then I hit a bad putt and another bad putt. You guys need anymore than that?