Impossible pin location at 18 causes chaos at high school state championship

If you play one golf course regularly, there’s probably one green at your favorite local track that fills you with dread because of its steep slopes and slick surface. And there’s also likely a specific pin location on that green that, perhaps when cut on one of the greenskeeper’s grumpier days, turns a difficult task into an impossible one.

At River Valley Golf Course in Adel, Iowa, the 18th hole is that green. And on Friday at the Iowa Girls High School 3A State Championship, the competitors unfortunately got to experience that pin location.

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Jake Brend, the news director at SCTV, shared the scoop on Twitter.

While watching the final round of the 3A, Brend witnessed carnage break out on the 18th green, where players faced a seemingly unfair pin location at the top of small mound on a severely sloping green, resulting in what Brend reported as an average score of quadruple bogey on the hole.

Brend wrote on Twitter: “Today at the Girls 3A State Golf Tournament at The River Valley Golf Course in Adel, the average score on hole 18 was a quadruple bogey.” He continued, “No, the golfers weren’t bad, but this had to have been the most unfair pin placement I’ve ever seen. This slope gave the athletes no chance.”

Brend caught extensive video footage of the disastrous results, which he shared in a video with his tweet. In it, you can watch putt after putt just miss the cup, only to trundle all the way off the green, with some players throwing their hands up in frustration.

In a previous tweet, Brend shared a photo that shows the full green surface at 18, where you can clearly spot the devilish pin placement.

You can see a detailed mapping of the 18th green at River Valley below, via our friends at GolfLogix.

The 3A state title eventually went to Rylee Heryford of Team Clear Lake, who successfully got through the difficult 18th with only a bogey.