It’s the shortest hole of them all in the British Open rota.
It got its name from Willie Park Jr., who won the Open twice and later wrote about the eighth hole at Royal Troon’s Old Course for Golf Illustrated, calling the shortie “a pitching surface skimmed down to the size of a postage stamp.”
At the 152nd edition of the British Open, which gets underway Thursday, this pint-sized terror will challenge the field of 158. Overall, the par-71 course measures 7,385 yards but the offical yardage for No. 8 is 123 yards, although it can play as short as 99. The putting surface is surround by five bunkers. In 1950, amateur Hermann Tissies needed five shots to get out of one of the bunkers, leading him to post a 15.
In 2024, golf fans can watch every shot over all four days live on the R&A’s website. Called “Postage Stamp Live“, the live streaming channel will have all the shots, from the first golfer to the last.
The Royal Troon website offers this description of the hole:
“The tee is on high ground and a dropping shot is played over a gully to a long but extremely narrow green set into the side of a large sandhill. Two bunkers protect the left side of the green while a large crater bunker shields the approach. Any mistake on the right will find one of the two deep bunkers with near vertical faces. There is no safe way to play this hole, the ball must find the green with the tee-shot. Many top players have come to grief at this the shortest hole in Open Championship golf.”
Henrik Stenson, the most recent to win the Claret Jug at Royal Troon in 2016, said, “If you’re the kind of fan that wants to see carnage I can highly recommend going out to that eigth hole and sitting in that grandstand on a difficult day.”
Tiger Woods was asked about the hole during his Tuesday news conference.
“I hit 9-iron and a pitching wedge the last two times I played it. I’ve hit as much as a 7-iron,” he said. “But it’s a very simple hole; just hit the ball on the green. That’s it. Green good, miss green bad. It doesn’t get any more simple than that. You don’t need a 240-yard par-3 for it to be hard.”
NBC, USA and Peacock have live coverage of all the golf for all four rounds starting at 1:30 a.m. ET on Thursday.
