Muirfield Village's New 16th To Debut

According to the GCSAA's preview, the hole is opening this week so I don't know if that means it actually has not seen any play yet, adding to the intrigue. In the photos I've seen it looks like a knock off of Augusta's 16th hole, but with more than one decent hole location.

Here's a YouTube video showing the destruction of the old hole, no great loss for golf architecture.



In this second video is it me or does it look like they added a back left bunker at the last minute?



Update on 2011-05-31 17:13 by Geoff

**Jack on the new hole during today's press gathering at Muirfield Village:

Obviously we have one change, major change, on the golf course, which is the 16th hole, and the 16th hole which used to play to about 214, plays about 200, 201, whatever they put down for the yardage on it. It's a little bit shorter. We took drainage that was coming through in the green that was piped, took that out and put a lake in that area. They ended up at the base at the top of the hill there, those of you that know the area there, the left of 16 was an area we had a little sort of drainage that went down into the creek that goes along 15.

And we used that area to -- we took where the drainage came from and we took the drainage and took it the other direction. In other words, instead of having it come down through the golf course, we stopped it there and took it back towards -- to the street out on Muirfield Drive.

And then they built a lake in that area, put a green alongside it. It's a kind of hole that I think will probably play easier with a good shot under the prevailing wind. The prevailing wind is a westerly wind, southwesterly wind, that usually when we hit the ball before the green was sitting sort of this way, and I think a lot of shots hit in there went through the green very easily or into the back bunker, and I never really cared for the way the ball went into that green.

So what I did is I took the green and put it more this way, which sort of lines up with the prevailing wind. And with the prevailing wind you have the ability to feed the ball back into the green so you don't have to worry about having to stop the ball as easily if you play a smart shot.

And if the wind turns the other way, if there's no wind, then stopping the ball on the green is not an issue.

I think that works out very well. The water is all along the left side of it. I think there's going to be a lot more 2s, there's going to be a lot more excitement. There's more gallery area. There's some hospitality tents there -- I don't know if you call them tents, what do we call them, skyboxes type things -- they're not skyboxes, either, but I don't know what they call them.

Q. Chalets.

JACK NICKLAUS: Whatever they are. (Laughter.)

I think you're going to find a lot more birdies. I think you'll find a lot of fairly conservative 3s, and I think you'll also find a few double-bogeys that will come in there, which an errant shot will not be rewarded and a good shot will be rewarded, which is what a good hole should be anyway.