The Seventh at Royal Porthcawl
Consistently ranked as one of the top 100 golf courses in the world, the venue for the 2014 Senior British Open is as traditional a links course as you will find anywhere. The shortest hole on this demanding layout is the seventh (122 yards from the championship tees) and is Royal Porthcawl's answer to Royal Troon's more famous Postage Stamp. While the hole is undeniably short in stature, it is also treacherous with a narrow entrance to an equally shallow putting surface that is well guarded by small hillocks and a necklace of six pot bunkers. Land in one of these and making bogey, let alone par, will be far from easy.
The Eleventh at Askernish
Remote Askernish Old, on the Hebridean island of South Uist, is the kind of course where you can imagine following in the footsteps of the Scottish forefathers who strode the sheep-cropped turf with a few hickories and a pocketful of gutta perchas. First laid out by 'Old' Tom Morris in 1891, in recent years it has been unearthed and traditionally restored to its former glory. It's thought that when 'Old' Tom came to Askernish, the 11th was designed as a par-4 with the green positioned out into the sea. Over the coming decades coastal erosion claimed the green leaving the hole as the challenging 197-yard par-3 it is today. Played over a deep gully and directly into a sea wind, when you stand on the tee of Barra Sight, it looks like you are hitting straight into the Atlantic Ocean - too much of a slice and you are!
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