KELLENBERGER

Kellenberger: Surveying the damage created by Sanderson Farms Championship's toughest hole

Hugh Kellenberger
Mississippi Clarion Ledger
Conrad Shindler birdied No. 16 on Thursday on his way to a first-round 66 and a share of the lead in the Sanderson Farms Championship.

The unnamed caddy walked up the fairway, looking for the ball. In response to his both-hand motions, I pointed to a spot 15 feet in front of me, behind the man-made fence-and-shrub structure. He shook his head, listened as his player was denied relief and told to play it as he lies.

The caddy ran up into the fairway to figure out the play, and as he came back into a view a cigarette suddenly appeared in his mouth. He took two long puffs, looked up to the sky and then dropped the cig onto the cart path before giving the bad news — this wasn’t even a lay-up situation, and just play it 75 yards back into the fairway.

That’s what No. 16 at the Country Club of Jackson is — it’s the type of hole that makes a man need to take a smoke break and ponder the life decisions that led to this moment.

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The Sanderson Farms Championship calls No. 16 the signature hole of the course, in large part because it is the toughest. During Thursday's first round there were only five birdies against 32 bogeys and 10 double-bogeys (and 85 pars).

If you let it, it’ll beat the heck out of you.

“Four pars there you’ll do some good,” said Andrew Landry, who did par it on his way to a share of the first-round lead.

It’s a 453-yard par-four that requires a more precise tee shot than most due to swamp the duration of the left-hand side of the hole. And your second shot has to be on because the green is up a hill and there’s a steep incline down to a water hazard that’s really a cross between a creek and a ditch.

And Thursday’s tee placement — seven yards up and seven yards to the left — was a devilish twist, especially in the morning when a stiff wind and cold air tended to pull shots away from the spacious right side of the green and down the left side of the hill and into the water.

“To get a west-ish wind here is really weird and that 16th hole, I’ve hit wedges at that a bunch of times and not five-iron out of the rough,” said Jonathan Randolph, who put that five-iron shot into the water and ended up with a double bogey on the hole. “... It’s an easy enough game I guess, just got to defy the wind and the way the hole slopes like that.”

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There’s a lot of differences between your average pro golfer and your average weekend duffer, but one of them is this — they recover like nobody’s business. So it didn’t seem to matter too much whether or not they hit their tee shot 280 yards or 300 during Thursday’s first round, or if it landed in the middle of the fairway or into the immediate rough. The second shot is what truly mattered unless you went like Craig Barlow and put your first shot into the swamp on your way to a double-bogey, or Robert Allenby who hit a tree and watched his ball carom to nearly the No. 3 fairway.

“It’s 220 to the hole,” Allenby’s caddie told him.

“That tells me nothing,” Allenby responded. “I’m just trying to chip it into the fairway.”

That was only the third-best one-liner I heard from the right rough on Thursday, just behind:

  • The rules official who, asked for a second opinion on a ball’s lie by Johnson Wagner, looked at it for a half-second and responded, “Yeah, you’re in the rough.”
  • Tom Lovelady telling his caddy, “I just got to get it through the trees. Wherever it goes it goes.” The level of give-up that quote suggested was not the case — Lovelady parred No. 16 after a terrific third shot put him less than two feet from the pin.

Not everyone had trouble on No. 16 — Conrad Shindler birdied it on his way to a 66 and a share of the first-round lead. "I got a little lucky and just made a good putt," Shindler explained.

But not everyone was so lucky. I sat there for close to five hours and watched the trials and tribulations of those who passed through. And then I lost a ball in the sun, noticed the golfer and caddy wildly waving their right arms and saw the ball again just as it whizzed no more than three feet past my head.

It was time for me to go, lest I be the next victim claimed by No. 16.