Each hole at Royal Portrush has a moniker: Hughies, Tavern, PG Stevenson’s and Feather Bed, to name a few. 

The 236-yard, par-3 16th? Calamity Corner. 

That could be where the British Open is decided. 

“I played it Monday (in a practice round) and just hit only the tee shot and missed it down on the right,” J.J. Spaun said. It’s pretty intimidating, like, visually. I didn’t know it was 240-plus yards. Wind-dependent can really make it a tough hole. I think just making four pars on that hole, you’re going to be gaining strokes on the field.”

The most elevated hole on the course, a tee shot to the right will be swallowed by the deep ravine that could leave players 100 feet below the green. The safer play is to aim left, but players might end up in Locke’s Hollow, named after four-time British Open champion Bobby Locke. In 1951, he hit his tee shot on the hole to the left in each round and made par all four days. 

In 2019, the last time the British Open was in Portrush, just 41% of players hit the green. And the putting surface is no bargain either. Rory McIlroy four-putted the hole for a double bogey during the first round en route to missing the cut.

That year, the hole played as the 42nd most difficult on Tour with a scoring average of 3.247 (0.247 strokes over par). It was the third hardest hole of the championship, behind the par-4 11th and par-4 14th, both ranking inside the top 10 on Tour. 

“You’ve got certain holes that you hang on,” Robert MacIntyre said, “like 16.”

Long par-3s have stirred up debate. In last month’s U.S. Open at Oakmont, the 8th hole stretched 289 yards, the longest par-3 in major championship history, provoking players to use a wood, hybrid and even driver, something rare in today’s game. It yielded a scoring average of 3.466, making it the fourth hardest hole on Tour this season. 

And players are apathetic to that type of layout. 

“I just think all the best par-3s are under 200,” Viktor Hovland said at the Memorial Tournament. “You can maybe have it just over 200, but as soon as you start to take head covers off on par-3s, I just think it gets a little silly.”

Last year’s British Open at Royal Troon featured the par-3 8th that plays 123 yards, known as the Postage Stamp. It’s the shortest hole in the championship’s history and the fifth shortest in all of the majors. Despite a triple bogey on it during the 1997 British Open, Tiger Woods had high praise for the iconic par-3. 

“(The Postage Stamp is) a very simple hole; just hit the ball on the green. That’s it,” Woods said in 2016. “Green good, miss green bad. It doesn’t get any more simple than that.”

Jon Rahm echoes that sentiment, believing that increasing a hole’s length doesn’t always add a level of difficulty. 

“More (long par-3s)? No,” Rahm said Tuesday at Royal Portrush. “I think when you find a short hole, we all enjoy the difference in scores. You can take 12 at Augusta, you can take the Postage Stamp, you can take 17 at TPC [Sawgrass]. There’s so many courses in this world that have short par-3s that can lead to a birdie or lead to a big number. That's what makes the hole a lot more interesting. 

“When you have a hole that the main difficulty is the length, I feel like that variability is just not going to—you're going to see a 3 or 4 for the most part and move on. Mainly because, if you make a 250-yard par-3 with water and crazy bunkers and things like that, it would be a little bit too much, right? I think in my case, it’s just more entertaining because in theory, due to the length, we should be able to make par or birdie easily and it just doesn't happen because the elements get in the way. 

“So I just find it more entertaining in that sense. I think one of the better par-3s I’ve played was that 15th hole on Saturday at L.A. Country Club (in the 2023 U.S. Open). It was 80 yards, and there was virtually no chance of hitting it inside 20 feet. I think that tells you about those holes that, in theory, should be easy, but it’s not.”

But regardless of how players feel about the par-3 16th at Royal Portrush, they’ll need to overcome it to hoist the Claret Jug on Sunday. 

“That’s why they call it, what, Calamity Corner?” Spaun said. “There’s going to be some calamity there.”


This article was originally published on www.si.com as Calamity Corner: the Daunting, Controversial Par-3 That Could Decide the British Open.

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