In Defense of Long Par 3s

Long par 3s don't seem to have many friends these days. Two weeks ago, during the press conferences before the Memorial Tournament, a clever reporter asked several PGA Tour pros about the prospect of playing a 300-plus-yard par 3 — the eighth hole at Oakmont Country Club — in this year’s U.S. Open. Viktor Hovland and Justin Thomas were happy to offer their thoughts.

“I just think all the best par 3s are under 200 [yards],” said Hovland. “You can maybe have it just over 200, but as soon as you start to take head covers off on par 3s, I just think it gets a little silly.”

“Yeah, I couldn’t tell you a par 3 over 250 yards that’s good, I would say, architecturally,” Thomas remarked.

A lot of people agree, apparently — including two golf journalists who aggregated Hovland’s and Thomas’s comments. Coleman Bentley of Golf Digest wrote, “When par 3s start pushing three bills, they aren’t tough, innovative, or even all that interesting. They are, quite simply, silly.” Riley Hamel went even further for Skratch: “Long par 3s are one of the worst things in golf.” As bad as slow play, rising green fees, elitism, or guys offering unsolicited swing advice to women at the driving range? Sheesh. Hamel added, "If a designer has to make a par 3 longer than 180-190 yards, they're not very good at their job."

The discourse proceeded in a similar vein on social media. Under Jamie Kennedy’s post featuring Hovland’s remarks, almost all of the replies were some variation of “spot-on!” Meanwhile, the response to my own post defending the honor of the long par 3 was more… uh, mixed.

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I was a little surprised. Aren’t No. 5 at Pine Valley, No. 16 at Royal Portrush, No. 17 at Merion East, No. 4 at Royal County Down, and No. 16 at Cypress Point (which Thomas acknowledged to be “pretty special,” though chiefly for “viewing reasons”) commonly ranked among the best one-shotters in the world? And just think: those holes — all of which measure more than 229 yards from the back tees — were built in the 1910s and 20s, when the ball didn’t travel nearly as far as it does today. All would have required full-bore strikes with a driver from most players.

(Let’s table, for the moment, the discussion of whether the conventions of par unduly influence golfers' opinions on this subject. Suffice it to say that if we lived in a world without the concept of par, there wouldn’t be much basis for criticizing the eighth at Oakmont, or any long par 3.)

So why the antipathy for long par 3s?

Well, I’ll grant that there are a lot of lazily designed ones. Courses with tournament aspirations have been known to turn mid-length par 3s into long par 3s simply by building new tee boxes. The resulting holes tend to be awkward and pointlessly hard.

But this is a problem of execution, not of the entire type. The fact that a lot of recent superhero movies have stunk doesn’t mean superhero movies stink, period. The Dark Knight and Iron Man prove that the genre can work, if handled skillfully. 

The more sophisticated critique of long par 3s is that they flatten out risk-reward decision-making. As Hovland put it during his press conference at the Memorial, “It just becomes like, okay, you got a certain target here and then you got to hit a shot around there and make a par and get out of there, instead of a shorter par 3 that entices you to get close to it, but it you’re a little bit off, you’re either in the water or in a short-sided spot, or if you bail out, you still have a tricky little putt.” 

In other words, Hovland contends that short par 3s encourage aggression and risk-taking, whereas long par 3s force players to shy away from trouble and hit conservative shots to broader zones.

I don’t think this is necessarily the case. Long par 3s can pose risk-reward dilemmas; they just have to do so at a scale that matches the length of the shot. In other words, if short par 3s can present risks for attacking certain pins, long par 3s can present risks for attacking certain areas.

Take the world’s most renowned long par 3, the 16th at Cypress Point. This is a great hole not just because of its setting but also because of its strategic design. If you go for the green, you have to carry a large stretch of the Pacific Ocean while avoiding the coves left and long right. Alternatively, you can hit an iron to the fairway short and left of the green and play a simple pitch from there. The green is large and mostly flat, so the primary strategic question of the hole is not whether to attack a certain pin; it is whether to go for the green at all. This is a dilemma appropriate to the scale of a 233-yard shot.

Another example of a strategically sophisticated long par 3 is the 11th at the North Course at Los Angeles Country Club. Because the hole plays downhill and up to 290 yards from the championship tees, players must generally land their ball short. Specifically, finding the high left side of the approach to the green usually results in the ideal rollout. Several of the best tee shots on the 11th hole during the second round of the 2023 U.S. Open followed this path.

But as the first scatter plot above shows, going for this kicker slope comes with risks. If you miss slightly left, you might find yourself with a long bunker shot and a slim chance of avoiding bogey. If you go a bit long, your ball will trundle down a bank on the other side, leaving a difficult pitch back up to a green that runs away. Again, this strategic challenge is at the right scale. Players attack an area rather than a pin, but that area is fraught with exactly the kind of danger Hovland claims long par 3s lack.

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The eighth hole at Oakmont Country Club is similar in some ways. In order to get close to a front or middle pin, players may need to use the downhill, left-to-right slope leading into the green. The problem? This 20- to 25-yard-wide strip of fairway is guarded by a necklace of bunkers, recently restored to their 1920s arrangement by Gil Hanse. The alternative is to lay up short of everything — an option that competitors in the U.S. Open are unlikely to contemplate, but that members and their guests might find useful.

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Both Nos. 8 at Oakmont and 11 at LACC North illustrate another important virtue of long par 3s: the emphasis on the ground game. Whereas short par 3s are primarily exercises in aerial golf, par 3s that play 230 yards or more from the back tees typically call for some engagement with the terrain in front of the green, even if conditions are not perfectly firm. This is an exciting element of the game that has become too rare outside of the links of Great Britain and Ireland.

The best argument for long par 3s, however, is that they lend variety to a golf course. In any collection of 18 holes, there is room for one par 3 that requires a well-struck wood from most players. The same goes for a par 3 that demands a precise wedge shot. It’s no coincidence that both appear on many of the best courses in the world. Cypress Point features the 137-yard 15th and the 233-yard 16th; Merion, the 128-yard 13th and the 241-yard 17th; Royal County Down, the 144-yard seventh and the 229-yard fourth; LACC North, the 133-yard 15th and the 277-yard 11th. Great golf architects avoid repetition, and one way they do that is by varying the lengths of their par 3s.

I do sympathize with Viktor Hovland’s and Justin Thomas’s perspectives. Many of the bigger one-shotters they play on Tour are more difficult than they are interesting. But in my experience, few types of holes are more thrilling to play than a beautifully situated, well-designed long par 3.

Some (Not All) of Our Favorite Long Par 3s

No. 16 at Royal Portrush Golf Club, 236 yards

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No. 4 at Royal County Down, 229 yards

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No. 3 at Chicago Golf Club, 256 yards

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No. 5 at Fishers Island Club, 225 yards

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No. 9 at the South Course at Oakland Hills County Club, 249 yards

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No. 17 at Hollywood Golf Club, 247 yards

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No. 4 at Essex County Club, 233 yards

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No. 12 at California Golf Club of San Francisco, 232 yards

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No. 17 at Sand Valley, 236 yards

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No. 11 at Old Barnwell, 230 yards

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No. 14 at Pinehurst No. 10, 264 yards

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