18th Hole at Augusta National: Holly

• Par: Par 4
• Length: 465 yards
• Name: Holly

The 18th hole at Augusta National Golf Club is one of the most-famous closing holes in golf by virtue of its being the home hole for both ANGC and The Masters Tournament. The hole begins with a tee shot played through a narrow chute of pine trees. It ends at the green you see pictured above, which, as you can tell from the photo, sits well above the surface of the fairway.

It's literally an uphill climb to the 18th tee, which is guarded by very large bunkers left and right. The hole also doglegs to the right, and drives that drift too far right wind up in trees and on pine straw. The green itself has two distinct tiers.

Augusta National's 18th hole is named "Holly," after American Holly (scientific name: ilex opaca), the small-red-berry-producing plant that is particularly popular at Christmas time.

This is a simulated flyover of No. 18 produced by Golfweek:

Scoring Stats on Augusta National Hole 18

The all-time cumulative scoring average in Masters Tournament play on the 18th hole is 4.23 strokes. That ranks the 18th as the 7th-toughest hole at Augusta National for the tournament's history.

The 18th hole has never played under-par in any Masters Tournament. The easiest it has played is an average of 4.0144 strokes in the 2001 Masters. The toughest it has played is a stroke average of 4.461 in the 1954 Masters.

All-Time Best and Worst Scores on Augusta's 18th Hole

Highest scores ever on No. 18: The all-time worst score on the 18th hole is an 8, a quadruple bogey, and eight golfers share that record. Four of them are major championship winners, two of them are Masters champions. These are the golfers who've made 8s on No. 18:

• Denny Shute, 1959
• Homero Blancas, 1970
• Jumbo Ozaki, 1994
• Ian Baker-Finch, 1995
• Arnold Palmer, 2000
• Camilo Villegas, 2007
• Henrik Stenson, 2012
• Jose Maria Olazabal, 2022

Lowest scores ever on No. 18: The best score ever recorded on No. 18 is an eagle 2, which has happened five times in Masters history. These are the golfers who've holed out their approach shots for an eagle:

• Felice Torza, 1948
• Denis Hutchinson, 1962
• Jim Colbert, 1974
• John Huston, 1997
• Chris DiMarco, 2006

Best tournament score ever on No. 18: What about the cumulative score by a golfer playing the 18th hole in one Masters? In 1997, John Huston played the 18th in 4-under-par for the tournament, a total of 12 strokes. He scored a 2 in the first round, a 3 in the second, a 4 in the third, and finished with a birdie-3 in the final round.

Worst tournament score on No. 18: And the highest cumulative tournament score on No. 18 is 7-over 23, which is what Kelly Kraft recorded on the hole during the 2012 tournament. Kraft's round-by-round scores were 5, 5, 6 and 7.

See more: Augusta National scorecard and hole names

Photo credit: Florian Fritsch [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons