 |
 |
 |
|
CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- The perfect snapshot in time is splashed across the first two pages, a panoramic color spread in which Tiger Woods has his right arm cocked, his intent clear, his target obvious.
|
|
| Tiger Woods flings his ball back down the closing 18th after his victory last year. (Getty Images) |
After he holed out on the brutish 18th last year to win the Wachovia Championship by two shots, Woods pulled his ball out of the hole, turned and flung it as far as he could down the fairway, the ultimate take that gesture.
A photo of that moment is prominent in a hardbound book issued this year to commemorate the first five years of the popular Quail Hollow event, although bandages and a tourniquet might have been a more appropriate keepsake for players who have endured the course's three-hole closing stretch over the years.
"These are really brutal finishing holes," Adam Scott said. "If you can survive these, you have proved something to yourself."
Not to mention everybody else.
"There is no way to fake it around this golf course, no way to scrape it around or not hit your best golf shots," said Brandt Snedeker, who finished third at the Masters. "Coming down the stretch on Sunday, if you're there, you know you are going to have to hit three good tee shots on 16, 17 and 18. It's just a great way to finish."
We'll modify the spelling just a shade, to "grate." Charlotte residents dubbed the daunting stretch the Green Mile, a term that has been co-opted by other courses over the years. In terms of actual footsteps, at a combined 1,175 yards, the trio of holes doesn't nearly reach the required mile-marker total.
But in terms of blisters, sore muscles and the sweat it exacts from players, those who navigate it feel like they've finished a marathon. They variously exhale, exult or expire, often in spectacular fashion. Every year, somebody puts the eau in odometer.
Next week's finishing stretch at the Players Championship is more notorious, though definitely not as punitive. Birdies and eagles are possible at TPC Sawgrass. The Wachovia is like walking on hot coals.
"You can make up ground on the lead by making pars," Phil Mickelson said.
The PGA Tour annually crunches its numbers to determine the measure of the toughest holes on tour. In the five years since the Wachovia event joined the tour fold, there's no consistently comparable closing stretch like the three-hole run at Quail Hollow.
The terrible treble ranked as the second-toughest closing run among all courses played in 2007. The four others in the top five were Carnoustie, Oakmont, Augusta National and Southern Hills -- sites of the four major championships. Put another way, of the tracks used regularly in PGA Tour competition, the three-part covey at Quail Hollow stands alone. Specifically, the field played the three Wachovia holes at a cumulative 1.05 shots above par last year. Only the British Open at Carnoustie, thanks to the train wrecks of players like Padraig Harrington, Andres Romero and Sergio Garcia, was tougher at 1.09 shots above par.
