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PACIFIC PALISADES, Calif. — The scariest putt in golf is somewhere between three and four feet.

Short enough that you expect to make it.

Long enough that you might not.

It gets tougher, I’d imagine, to hit a three-and-a-half footer with 5,000 people watching from the hillside in front of you.

Tougher when they’ve just gasped in horror at what you’ve just done.

Tougher still when one of those people is Rory McIlroy, who just so happens to be one stroke behind you.

And tougher when another is Tiger Woods, your childhood hero, looking on from a perch beside the clubhouse, 50 yards and 500 miles away, waiting to shake your hand as long as you can somehow get your ball to the bottom of that hole.

It gets tougher when you’re on the brink of winning your first PGA Tour event, something you’ve dreamt of your entire life, something you know you can do but also know isn’t guaranteed.

And tougher knowing that missing wouldn’t just mean letting an opportunity slip by — it would mean blowing a six-stroke lead, crashing on the final turn, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

It gets tougher when the pressure hasn’t slowly mounted, but instead, after three rounds and 15 holes of low stress and many birdies, it hits like a freight train, with a shrinking lead, a growing crowd, decibels, nerves and heart rate rising by the minute.

And it gets tougher when you can’t feel your hands.

SUNDAY BROUGHT THE MOST GLORIOUS WEATHER in the history of Los Angeles, tied for first with 80 percent of all days in L.A. history, 70 degrees and sunny, deep blue cloudless sky matching the deep blue ocean just visible from the balcony of Riviera Country Club’s iconic clubhouse.

That was the setting for the final round of the Genesis Invitational, which felt like it could go one of two directions. Jacob Bridgeman began the day with a six-shot lead over Rory McIlroy and seven-plus over the rest of the gang, having played nearly flawless golf through three rounds. Bridgeman has been very good and very steady since last season, but entering Sunday he’d never won. Would he succumb to the pressure, blow up and yield to the chase pack? Or would he keep his foot on the gas and continue speeding away from the rest of the field? Those felt like the two options.

Instead, much of the day settled in the awkward in-between.

There are few better golf settings than the iconic old-school cool of Riviera, though early tee times plus an L.A. crowd living up to its get-there-in-the-fourth-inning reputation led to a slightly muted early stretch.

Fans were pulling for McIlroy, wanting to will him into a comeback, but they were quietly supportive of Bridgeman, too, an impressive unknown without an ounce of villain in him. Bridgeman matched McIlroy’s birdie at No. 1 to keep his lead at six. He birdied the third to stretch it to seven. Even that was greeted with light applause. McIlroy’s early birdie tries slid by, doing little to ignite the crowd. Hollywood seemed unimpressed with this particular bit of anticlimax.

(One star among them: Ben Affleck, who walked the entire front nine inside the ropes with his son and tried multiple times to frame up the perfect iPhone photo of a McIlroy tee shot. The stars, they’re just like us!)

Bridgeman has been forged in the fires of competitive golf, first growing up in South Carolina, then at Clemson and more recently on the game’s top circuit. He’s been on a steady upward trajectory. He’s made it clear that success isn’t all his own.

When he first started working with his swing coach Scott Hamilton, he had some work to do. “I didn’t hit the ball straight, didn’t hit it high, didn’t have a lot of control with my irons,” he said.

When he settled on his first-choice caddie, G.W. Cable, there was just one problem: he’d have to take a pay cut to join Bridgeman on the Korn Ferry Tour.

“He took a gamble on me and luckily we only spent one year down there and I think he’s pretty pleased with his gamble,” Bridgeman said.

He earned $4.4 million on the course last season. He was playing for a $4 million winner’s check on Sunday. Good pressure to have.

But just because he’s been good doesn’t mean it’d be easy. As the day lingered, Bridgeman let the rest of the field do the same. He bogeyed 4. He bogeyed 7. He hit the middles of greens, he scared the hole, just missing putts that he’d watched fall the first three days.

McIlroy finally made some semblance of a push early on the back nine. Birdie at 11 cut the lead to five before a highlight-reel hole-out birdie from the bunker at 12 electrified the crowd for the first time all day.

Up ahead, several other contenders made their presence felt. Aldrich Potgieter got to 15 under with an eagle at 11. Adam Scott played stunning golf, stacking eight birdies and zero bogeys to post the clubhouse lead at 16 under. And then, just as Bridgeman found himself in a spot of bother, Kurt Kitayama made his seventh and eighth birdies of the day in the group ahead to post 17 under par.

Bridgeman wobbled with a wayward tee shot at No. 16, dumping his iron into the front right bunker, an inescapable jail.

“It was honestly easy until I got to about 16 and then it got really hard,” Bridgeman said post-round. His caddie, looking at his lie, didn’t hesitate. He had to aim right and play for bogey. His lengthy par putt wandered past the hole; he negotiated in a nervy try for bogey. The lead was suddenly one.

Things only got tougher at the par-5 17th, where Bridgeman’s second shot sailed right and found a bunker, leaving him with no good options. He did well to play a sensible shot.

“Definitely around the green, that was the first time that I had to play defense,” he said.

It was around this time that Bridgeman lost feeling in his hands.

“I didn’t really feel really crazy nervous until I had a five-footer for bogey on 16; that one was sketchy,” he said. “I hit a really good putt and luckily it went in, and then I was really nervous from there on out. I couldn’t even feel my hands on the last couple greens, I just hit the putt hoping it would get somewhere near the hole.”

But on full shots, Bridgeman said, he still felt okay.

“I felt like I was just kind of in robot mode and autopilot, I could just swing the club and it would do exactly what it’s supposed to do,” he said. An envious feeling.

That’s what he did on No. 18, sending driver up the left-center fairway off the tee and playing a towering approach right at the hole, 20 feet short, straight uphill.

And then he left it three and a half feet short.

The crowd groaned. They murmured. Suddenly, a tantalizing possibility was back in play: a miss would mean a three-way playoff between Bridgeman, Kitayama and McIlroy, whose dramatic birdie putt had dripped over the front edge just moments before.

Bridgeman is good friends with Chris Gotterup, a rising star on Tour and a recent multiple-time winner. He recounted watching the WM Phoenix Open, where Gotterup poured in a winning birdie putt with aggressive speed.

“We were like, what were you doing? You hit your putt so hard, it was going to go four feet by the hole. He said, ‘I have no idea, I couldn’t feel my hands.’

“I thought he was kind of crazy until I got to this moment and then I was like, yep, I understand what you’re talking about now, Chris. I had no idea what to do.”

It’s tough to make a three-and-a-half footer, and it’s tougher if you can sense that some portion of the crowd around is suddenly hoping that you will.

Tough for you or me.

But, as he and we suddenly realized, easier for Jacob Bridgeman.

“The hole’s really white and it looked pretty big for whatever reason on 18,” he said. He had his read — hit it at the middle of the middle — and he knew what he could control.

“I was just hoping that the ball would roll where it was supposed to roll.”

Most of the time, nothing good can happen with a three-and-a-half-footer. It’s a multiple-choice test with two options: Relief or disaster. This time, though, salvation lay within. The ball rolled as it was supposed to. Bridgeman’s triumph was official. He plunged into the winner’s whirlpool; his wife greeted him on the green, he floated through his CBS interview, he climbed the stairs, shook Woods’ hand, didn’t process whatever he said.

“This is way, way better than I’ve ever dreamt it,” he said.

He also offered an admission.

“I’m glad it’s done now.”

Dylan Dethier welcomes your comments at dylan_dethier@golf.com.

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Ahead of the Genesis Invitational, the Los Angeles area around Riviera Country Club had been pummeled by rain. When more rain arrived during Thursday’s opening round, Riviera’s putting surfaces turned so soft Collin Morikawa said he’d “never seen greens like this.”

He wasn’t the only star flummoxed by Riviera’s soaked greens on Thursday. World No. 2 Rory McIlroy detailed his confusion over the “soft” but “fast” green conditions, while Adam Scott was robbed of a hole-in-one after his tee shot embedded next to the cup.

Here’s what you need to know.

Collin Morikawa on Riviera: ‘I’ve never seen greens like this’

Morikawa is currently on a roll. He captured his first victory since 2023 with a clutch performance at last week’s AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. Then on Thursday, the two-time major champion opened with a solid three-under 68 at the Genesis Invitational.

But you’d never know Morikawa was tied for fifth based on his comments about his round Thursday evening. Riviera’s extremely soft greens left Morikawa sounding confused.

“I honestly don’t know how they got it to this. Like I’ve never seen greens like this,” Morikawa began during his post-round interview.

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He continued by explaining how the super-soft conditions allowed him to attack greens from unenviable lies and distances, where he’d normally be worried about holding the putting surface.

“I mean, you could stop any club from anyplace on, you know, from the rough, flyer lies. Like, I mean, I think I had two or three shots today, flyers out of the first cut and rough and like I’m not worried about missing the green at all,” he explained. “It’s just purely hit and hope.”

Counterintuitively, some greens were still playing fast despite being extremely soggy and soft. Morikawa saw this reality in action when he witnessed McIlroy land his approach on 18 near the hole, only to watch it spin back 30 feet off the front edge of the green.

“And then, I mean, you saw Rory’s shot on 18, like it’s just unfair’s not the right word,” Morikawa explained. “You just have to really take those 30-footers and go out and make some birdies somewhere else.”

Rory McIlroy explains ‘difficult’ challenge of greens at Genesis Invitational

After his own opening round at the Genesis was complete, McIlroy also spoke to the media, and he was asked about Morikawa’s comments concerning the condition of Riviera’s greens.

McIlroy echoed Morikawa’s thoughts, arguing that navigating Riviera’s greens on Thursday was unusually difficult because they were somehow “soft” and “fast” at the same time.

“Yeah, it’s like they’re soft but they’re fast, I think that’s the hard thing. It’s like last week at Pebble they were soft, but they were slow because they’re worried about the wind,” McIlroy explained. “Here, they’re so fast.”

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He continued: “The ball, like it just starts to get away from you a little bit, especially if it spins back. It’s just taking more club and taking spin off it. I’m hitting a lot of just little chippy 7-irons and 8-irons.”

He also added his own thoughts about his surprising approach shot on 18.

“And even that 9-iron at the last I hit, it was 186, I hit a full-blooded 9-iron thinking that, you know, 25 miles an hour downwind, it’s not going to come back too much and, you know, it came back 30 feet,” he said.

The steep nature of Riviera’s heralded greens added to the challenge.

“I think it’s a combination of how soft they are, but also how fast they are as well. And a lot of the greens here are pitched quite severely from back to front, so it’s difficult.”

Despite the confusion, McIlroy’s scorecard didn’t seem to suffer from the trying conditions. Rory made six birdies and one bogey on Thursday to shoot a 66 and get within one shot of the lead.

Adam Scott robbed of hole-in-one when ball embeds in Riviera green

If there were one shot that perfectly exemplified just how strange Riviera’s greens were playing in Round 1, it wasn’t McIlroy’s approach on 18. Instead, it was the bizarre performance of Adam Scott’s tee shot on the par-3 16th.

Arriving at the 165-yard par-3 at one under, Scott hit a nearly perfect iron shot from the tee. After impact, the shot tracer showed Scott’s ball flying directly toward the pin, and it was on point. Scott’s ball came crashing down 7 inches in front of the cup.

But instead of bounding and rolling into the hole, Scott’s ball embedded into the soggy 16th green right where it landed. Check out the shot below.

With that, a would-be hole-in-one turned into a tap-in birdie-2, and Scott was left shaking his head, as Morikawa and McIlroy had done earlier.

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People go to great lengths to get on Riviera Country Club, but this method does not come recommended. 

At around 1 p.m. on Friday, a small plane made an emergency landing at the prestigious private club in Santa Monica Calif., buzzing low over the course and bouncing to a halt in a wild scene captured on cell phone video. 

According to the Los Angeles Fire Department, there were no injuries to anyone on the ground or to any of the three people on the plane, KTLA Channel 5 in Los Angeles reported. 

A Riviera representative told Golf.com by phone that the club could not comment on the matter.

In the video of the incident, which quickly went viral, a man’s voice is heard calling out in surprise from the course as a phone camera focuses on the near distance. Moments later, a single-engine Cessna comes into view, winging low up the the 1st fairway and bouncing on the turf just left of the 2nd green before swerving to a stop by the 10th tee as startled golfers look on.

A high-end members-only club and three-time major championship host, Riviera is well-known to golf fans as host of the Genesis Invitational, an annual Tiger Woods-hosted event that is part of the PGA Tour’s West Coast Swing. This year, the Genesis was forced to relocate to Torrey Pines in San Diego after devastating wild fires swept through Los Angeles in January. The blazes, which left 30 people dead and reduced entire neighborhoods to ruins, burned up to the edge of Riviera but did not damage the course.

Few details about the emergency landing were immediately available on Friday afternoon, but flight-tracking information posted on flightradar24.com show that a Cessa with the same tail number as the plane in the video was scheduled to land at around the same time as the incident at nearby Santa Monica Airport. 

The incident will be investigated by the National Transportation Safety Board. 

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The Genesis Invitational will be played at a different site next month than its typical host Riviera Country Club, following the fires that have ravaged Los Angeles in the last two weeks. 

The PGA Tour announced the decision Thursday afternoon, saying the Genesis Invitational will be contested “at an alternate location” over the same scheduled dates of February 10-16. The venue decision “will be provided in the coming days” the statement read. 

The Genesis Invitational, which is hosted by Tiger Woods and the Tiger Woods Foundation, has been played at Riviera Country Club, one of the best courses in the world, for the last 26 years, and many of the years before that, dating back to the late 1920s. But Riviera is located in the Pacific Palisades, one of the locales hit hardest by one of the worst fires in the history of California. 

The golf club was located within a mandatory evacuation zone for much of the last week, with the perimeter of the Palisades Fire coming within a couple hundred yards of the course. Video footage soon trickled out from near the club with fire and smoke raging in the background. Luckily for the club, the site of the course was spared. 

The Palisades Fire has been the biggest of the multitude of blazes that have destroyed parts of LA County in January. The Riviera-adjacent fire has spanned more than 23,000 acres and, as of Thursday afternoon, was just 22% contained.

Woods made a statement about the fires earlier this week, alluding to charitable efforts he and his foundation plan to make. Then on Tuesday night, he was asked about the effect it may have on the staging of the Genesis Invitational.

“It’s just sad,” Woods said after his debut TGL appearance, standing next to Max Homa. “Max and I have grown up there. We’re SoCal kids. To see what has happened, I’ve known a couple people that have lost everything, so it’s just hard.

“As far as the Genesis, we’re trying to just figure everything out and make sure that everyone is safe and we have meetings scheduled going forward. But as of right now, we’re not really focused on the tournament. It’s more about what we can do to help everyone who’s struggling, who’s lost homes and had their lives changed.”

The PGA Tour has routinely brought the best golfers in the world to the country’s west coast for the first two months of the calendar year, often culminating in the Genesis Invitational in mid-February, before the Tour heads to Florida. All of which means the event will have potential homes for this 2025 iteration that are used to hosting tournament infrastructure and spectators. The last time the Genesis Invitational was held away from Riviera was in 1998, when it was hosted at Valencia Country Club north of LA, because Riviera was playing host to the U.S. Senior Open.

In other years, dating back to the 1970s and 60s, the event has been held at Rancho Park in LA and Brookside Golf Course in Pasadena, but those are both municipal courses incapable of hosting a modern, major sporting event. There is no shortage of elite golf courses in the Los Angeles area, but given how the fires have affected huge swaths of the county, the event may need to be moved outside of the Greater LA Metro Area.

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The Los Angeles wildfires that have spread across the area could alter the PGA Tour’s plans for next month’s Genesis Invitational at Riviera Country Club.

According to the Wildfire Alliance, the Palisades fire, which started Tuesday, is already the most destructive in Los Angeles history.

Pacific Palisades is the home of Riviera Country Club, which hosts the Genesis Invitational, a signature Tour event hosted by Tiger Woods.

On Thursday, the Tour sent a memo to players informing them that it has not made a decision about potentially shifting either the date or location of the Genesis.

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“At this point, it is premature to discuss the potential impact on the Genesis Invitational,” the Tour said in the memo. “Although The Riviera Country Club has not been directly affected by the fires, our immediate concern is the health and welfare of those in the affected communities, including all our members who have ties to Southern California. We will keep the membership updated as the situation develops.”

There are still multiple fires raging across the Los Angeles Area.

According to the Associated Press, the fires have burned more than 10,000 structures and killed at least 10 people. The Palisades fire has burned over 30 square miles and is only 8 percent contained. Roughly 180,000 people are under evacuation. The fires have spread over an area that is larger than the city of San Francisco.

The fires have already impacted other sports leagues. The NBA postponed the Los Angeles Lakers game on Thursday night, and the NFL has moved Monday night’s NFC wild-card game from SoFi Stadium in Englewood, Calif., to Glendale, Ariz.

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PACIFIC PALISADES, Calif. — Poor Denny McCarthy. Sure, he got to play Riviera Country Club all by himself Saturday morning. He got to rip around, unencumbered by the tee sheet, circling the front nine in just 83 minutes. He completed his third round before the contenders had finished breakfast. I’m sure he enjoyed it.

But that sprint to the finish line, which he accomplished in just over three hours, also meant this lonely round would be capped by a mostly lonely finish. He tapped in for 68 in front of a couple dozen people, at most. There’s no fun in that. Especially here at Riv. 

The iconic golf club has done a few things right over the years. Hitching your wagon to Tiger Woods, a great host, and Genesis, a doting sponsor, is a good start. But what it has done best is preserve the ground of its 1st tee, which rests under the shadow of the clubhouse, and the hill surrounding its 18th green. The former leads to iconic photographs of golf history and the latter leads to some of the best golf viewing on the planet.

You can have your 16th hole at TPC Scottsdale; this setting is more serene. Tame. Pure. You can have your Masters experience, there’s nothing like it. But you can’t have it year after year. (Unless you’re really lucky.) You can have your 17th at the Players Championship, the island green with an amphitheater all its own. The stakes couldn’t be higher, but the golf here lasts much longer. It’s much more than a smooth 9-iron.

Jason Day called Riviera’s finish “like a little colosseum,” which makes sense. The grassy wall shoots upward like the slope of a black diamond. And the nylon rope separating player from patron sits right at the edge of the green. 

“You’ve got fans on top of you,” Day said. “That’s pretty cool.” 

Day weighed in long enough to clarify something even more important: that it’s a damn difficult golf hole. Pros hit blind tee shots into a fairway that banks from left to right. The rough up on the left also banks left to right. The rough on the right banks from left to a dead zone. Why is this great for the people up by the green? It makes birdies rare. It makes bogeys just as plausible. It makes golf a legitimate grind, which is when golf gets the most fascinating. When shot-making is heightened, the golf nerds can nerd out. The casuals can become avids. The oohs, ahhs and even the oh-no!s multiply. 

Settings like this one are why you pull out your credit card, buy tickets and actually go to a golf tournament. To hang out, see the best players in the world, and see things you wouldn’t see on TV. Like Rickie Fowler’s long iron spraying out to the right and crashing into the United Airlines 19th hole. Seconds later, you’d see Brian Harman launch his ball from 194 yards in to three-and-a-half feet. A full stroke gained on the field there, making you wonder — does this hole favor lefties? 

When Tommy Fleetwood’s birdie attempt squeezed off the edge of the hole, you could sort of tell he was upset. But you could really tell that Scottie Scheffler was flabbergasted. A peek into their demeanors on the putting surface these days. When Tony Finau’s birdie putt did everything but go in, he swung around to the crowd like a true entertainer, looking for some company in his disbelief. Not one of those shots was shown on the broadcast.

Spend enough time behind 18 and you’ll only want one more thing: a massive TV screen playing the CBS broadcast, like they have in fan village areas at the Open Championship or Ryder Cup. You’re at a golf tournament, after all. You should be shown as much golf as possible. Patrick Cantlay is leading the tournament about a half-mile away, it would be nice to see what he’s up to. Of course, the people making that broadcast are right behind you on 18, looking out from a lovely little perch of their own.

“This amphitheater is heaven sent,” Trevor Immelman said Saturday afternoon, taking it all in. Trevor sees a lot of golf courses, a lot of stadium holes, a lot of tournament setups. Maybe that’s why Jim Nantz let Immelman’s words hang in the air for a bit. On a mostly overcast day, the sun had finally peeked out, encouraging the crowd to take off those sweatshirts and jackets they’d been shivering in all afternoon. The newfound warmth and the soft cushion of Kiyuya grass suddenly made 18 the perfect setting for something golf fans know well: a Saturday afternoon nap. The same kind you’d take at home. Only with this one, the golf will actually wake you back up. 

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On Friday, Kevin Streelman nearly drove the 10th green, leaving himself just a 25-yard chip to the hole from just inches off the front part of the green.

On any other drivable par-4 on the PGA Tour, Streelman would be looking at an easy birdie opportunity. But Riviera Country Club‘s famous 10th hole is no ordinary hole.

Instead, Streelman’s eagle chip dove left as soon as it hit the putting surface and caromed all the way past the pin and into the middle of the bunker beyond the green.

Those types of shots are all too common on No. 10 which ranks as the second hardest par-4 shorter than 350 yards on the PGA Tour since 2013-14. The 2nd hole at Spyglass Hill has played just seven-hundredths of a stroke harder than 10 at even par over the same time period. The sample size for Spyglass Hill is much smaller, however, as the course is only played for one round during the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am.

On Friday at the Genesis Invitational, the hole was even tougher, playing to a stroke average of 4.086, despite playing only 304 yards. That was less than three-tenths of a stroke easier than the 494-yard par-5 1st (which is playing harder than it has in a decade).

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Streelman was able to get his third up and down for a hard-earned par, but not everyone else had the same fortune.

Tiger Woods had his own “mishap” on 10 during the opening round of the Genesis Thursday. Woods mishit his driver from the tee, leaving himself an awkward long bunker shot. He chunked the second, leaving him an awkward pitch for a third, which like Streelman, he was unable to stop on the green that pitches hard from right to left and finished in the back bunker.

Woods saved a solid bogey, but it was less than ideal when the scorecard would seem to indicate an eagle opportunity. None were made over the opening two rounds.

The beauty (and difficulty) is in the nearly century-old design by George C. Thomas. In addition to the severe leftward pitch of the green, the putting surface is angled about 45 degrees off the line of the fairway. Additionally, the approach kicks balls away from the green, instead of toward it, making it even harder to run a tee shot onto the green.

All of those angles make it nearly impossible to hit the green if your tee shot is short and right. Pros were just 2-of-15 in hitting the green from the right rough over the first two rounds, including none Friday, the hardest on the course from the right rough.

Viktor Hovland experienced that on Friday. His second from the right rough was short in the front greenside bunker. His third went over the green, and he took three more to get down for a double-bogey 6.

And yet despite all the train wrecks it has seen over the years, the holes is often known as a player’s favorite.

Instruction

“You can make a case for 10 [as my favorite] obviously,” Jon Rahm said after an opening-round 65 during which he birdied 10 while being one of just seven to drive the green. “I’m pretty sure if you gave everybody four pars, we would all take it, except the rare year if somebody gets a little lucky on the tee shots and you get a chance to make birdie.”

Max Homa also made birdie on 10 Thursday, his first of the day. Although he did it the hard way, driving it long and left of the green before dumping his second in the back bunker. His third found the bottom of the cup to jumpstart the 18- and 36-hole leader’s tournament.

“I would have taken par on the tee,” Homa said Thursday after a 64. “I told [my caddie] Joe [Greiner] that was probably the coolest way I ever started a round because I hit a good drive and you were kind of praying. And I had a not-so-good lie in a not-so-great spot and I hit a pretty good flop shot, it came up a step or two short and now I’m staring bogey or worse in the face.

“But I thought I collected myself. I knew I hadn’t done a whole lot wrong so trusted my bunker game. I hit a very good bunker shot, I will say, but that was a nice boost.”

The overwhelming majority of pros — nearly 95 percent through the opening two rounds — go for the green at 10. Given that the hole has the lowest green-in-regulation percentage on Tour from less than 75 yards (just 61.96% since 2013).

Since 2003, players who go for the green are a combined 897 under par while those who layup are 130 over par. Just one birdie was made in the opening two rounds by someone who laid up.

If you really want to find out how difficult it is when a layup goes awry, ask Justin Thomas. He hit iron on both Thursday and Friday with his first attempt finding the cross bunker 116 yards from the hole. His approach found the back bunker, and he was unable to get the up-and-down.

His tee shot found the right fairway on Friday, but that wasn’t any better. His approach came up short in the front bunker, leading to another bogey.

For Saturday’s third round, officials moved the pin all the way on the front left portion of the green, which as of this writing (2:45 p.m. ET) has already led to the first two eagles of the week. Thomas came up just short of the green with his fairway wood tee shot, and he got up and down for birdie this time.

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They ‘broke’ a hole at historic Riviera Country Club. And their reward?

An electronic leaderboard this year. And trees potentially in 2024. 

You can maybe call it the Viktor Videoboard. And the Hovland Hardwoods. It was Viktor Hovland, after all, who somewhat popularized a wild move on the 15th at Riv. Last year, over all four rounds at the Genesis Invitational, Hovland played the dogleg right very right — after setting up at about a 1 o’clock angle on the tee box, he drove down the adjacent 17th fairway and away he went, as did a few others.  

But where once sat an opening now sits the leaderboard, about 30 yards ahead of the tee. According to the chief referee for this year’s Genesis, the trees are coming. The reasoning?

“Integrity of the hole.”

“Every effort was made to retain the integrity of the hole by working with the Riviera CC on a tree re-planting to fill the void,” Steve Rintoul said in a statement. “While this did not happen for the 2023 tournament, and rather than installing an internal out of bounds at such an iconic venue, the decision was made to move a scoreboard into place to simply deter players from taking that route. That decision was made solely with the safety of other players, volunteers and spectators on the 17th hole in mind. 

“Given that, we still have had a couple of players taking that route, and their caddies have been informed to fore-caddie on the 17th hole without any issues.”

Unsurprisingly, Hovland has been steadfast, scoreboard be damned. He’s hit twice down 17 (and Collin Morikawa once). It’s been some sight.  

On Thursday and Friday, Hovland moved to the left side of the tee box, then moved two club lengths back of the markers. (That’s OK, according to the rules definition of “teeing area.”) And he hit, his ball clearing the top of the 10-foot-high board by about 10 or so feet, before landing on the 17th hole; on Thursday, he was in the fairway and parred, and on Friday, he was, stunningly, right of the fairway and bogeyed. 

“I was out there yesterday when I was walking around, and I was thinking to myself: Is this the play?” analyst Colin Swatton said Thursday on the PGA Tour Live broadcast. “Does this really make the hole that much easier? I wasn’t convinced, but obviously Viktor has done the math on it, and he figures it is.”

“I never thought of it, but he did, way back when he played amateur competitions here,” analyst Mark Wilson added. “And he went down there every single round last year. I still don’t get it because it makes that second shot over that bunker that guards the right side of the green pretty difficult, in my opinion, and then you got to go over and see the other group on 17. It’s just awkward.” 

Swatton and Wilson are right — the play doesn’t make 15 all that much easier. The landing area on 17 isn’t that wide, and the shot into the green is still guarded by a front bunker. And that, of course, raises a question:

Why do it all?

The answer, Hovland, says, is just fit. Or, maybe more accurately, a lack of it. The move avoids the hole’s dogleg and fairway bunker — though, as he learned Friday, when he bogeyed the hole, the play is not without its own problems. 

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“I played down 17 last year,” Hovland said on a video released by the PGA Tour, “and this year they put a screen up in the way, but it wasn’t high enough, so with the tee box all the way back, I could just kind of tee the ball up, take two club lengths, go back, and yeah, hit a nice drive in the middle of the fairway on 17 and had a pretty straightforward 9-iron in there and hit the green so it was a very stress-free hole.”

For possibly this year.   

Of course, the unconventional is nothing new in golf, and it also brought to mind a similar play from Lon Hinkle, who, on the 8th hole at Inverness at the 1979 U.S. Open, hit his tee shot left and onto the nearby 17th fairway, on his way to making birdie. Memorably, the USGA planted a tree on 8 to try to block the shot, though Hinkle tried it again. 

And the tree was named the “Hinkle Tree” going forward. (In 2020, it was unfortunately uprooted by a storm.)

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