Every year I try to go down to Amen Corner and walk 10, 11 and 12 and watch them hit balls onto the 13th green. It’s hard to do it on Sunday because there are so many people down there, and it’s hard to keep up with everything.
Part of the fun of being at Amen Corner is watching the leaderboard and hearing the roars and looking at the board and figuring out where it’s coming from. You hear a roar, and you know somebody made an eagle at 13, or you hear a groan, and you know somebody has hit it in the water.
The Larry Mize chip-in (on the 11th hole in 1987) was the most dramatic. It literally won the tournament for him. That chip-in was even more dramatic because it beat Greg Norman, who had lost the previous major (the PGA Championship) when Bob Tway holed it out of a bunker.
Fred Couples hit a tee shot at No. 12 the year he won (1992) that hung up on the bank. That ball should have rolled into the water, but it didn’t, and Couples was able to get up-and-down for par. If that ball goes in the water, he doesn’t win the Masters.
In 1980 Tom Weiskopf hit five balls in the water and wound up with a 13, which is the highest score ever on that hole. Weiskopf was not very happy after the round.
In 1989 Nick Faldo won a playoff at No. 11 over Scott Hoch when it was really too dark to be playing. They started the playoff on No. 10, and the air turned cold and it was misting rain. Hoch complained it was too dark — and it was. But he missed a two-foot putt at No. 10 that would have won the tournament, and Faldo won it on the next hole.
In 1968, Bruce Devlin wound up in fourth place. He might have won that year, but in the second round he hit it in the water at No. 11 and wound up making an eight. A lot was made of the fact that Devlin had been a plumber back home in Australia, so there were a lot of plumber jokes going around that day.
There have been a lot of dramatic things that have happened at Amen Corner. You can’t really win the tournament or lose it there because you’ve still got to play the rest of the course. But it can put you in the position to win or lose the Masters.
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