Challenges of the Tricky Par 4 10th at Royal Birkdale
Smylie Kaufman and Charlie Hulme discuss the importance of adapting to shifting winds and decide critical tee shots on the 10th hole at Royal Birkdale.
Video Transcript
And we are on to the back nine.
Let's start with the par-four 10th, 397 yards.
Patty says that the bad miss here is, is going way right, so there's a ton of trouble over there.
You tend to agree with that?
Well, this is an interesting hole because today was east-northeast, which I think the Throughout the week it's gonna be a little bit more in off of this tee, so the situation that I'm talking about, and it's probably not gonna come out too much based off of the wind being right to left and a touch of help today.
Andrew Novak tr- decided to try to hit driver off of this tee today, which if you're standing on the tee and you looked at the line that he took, you would think, "Where in the world did he just hit the golf ball?"
'Cause he was trying to, like, get it up, like, at the green.
He, he got up there and he was still was 30 yards right of the green.
That's how far, like, left you have to go if you wanna go at this green.
It's a dogleg left.
You're gonna see a lot of irons off of this hole, especially with the wind, I think probably being a little bit more left or right and hurting.
But you're gonna have some in and off the right.
But it's a, it's just another one of those tee shots, man, that, that you feel like you have to shape something to find the fairway.
Mm-hmm.
Or, or at least Like, you could take all the bunkers out of play, sure, and hit something at that, have it finish at about 235 yards.
But then on the next shot you're gonna be playing a little bit more back into the breeze, uh- Mm-hmm or even just a little bit of cross.
So it's, you know, how, how much do you wanna bite off and, with this dogleg?
Do you wanna challenge the bunkers or do you just wanna take it all out of play?
And, I think that's a question that, that most guys, I think, will say, "You know what, give me the, give me the further distance into the hole and let me try to hold an eight iron into the green."
okay.
On to the 11th, another par four, 434 yards.
Padraig Harrington says, "It's a dogleg left and the tee shot is all about avoiding the bunker at the left corner and the three bunkers further down on the right.
For me, it's a classic Royal Birkdale hole.
A good tee shot breaks the back of the hole to provide a birdie opportunity."
Uh- That's right your thoughts on the 11th.
Yeah.
It's Gosh, I, I'm telling you, the, it's, it reminds me of the eighth hole.
And the eighth hole was, you know, had those cluster of bunkers, of three or four bunkers that feel like they're all just connected and that there's four yards of fairway.
The 11th hole was that.
But when you look at the book, that's when you realize that there's a bunker to avoid and a bunker to try to stay short of.
Mm-hmm.
And it feels like that's, you know, you try to take out the left bunker and then you try to keep it short of the right bunker.
For the most part, that's kind of the theme of a lot of, these holes in the, when they have these things clustered out, is you just have to be able to pick a side.
And then you just have to trust that you're taking a club that'll stay short of it.
But this was a hole today that Joaquim Niemann tried to, pull a five iron, just keep short of the right bunker at 302 yards and hit it past it.
Wow.
Wow.
So, yeah.
So it's E- even in that situation, man, it's just wild.
