Hole #10 “Carries”

396 yards, 360 yards, 305/235 yards, Par 4

Charles Banks in 1925 “Another fine hole is the 10th, a par 4 highlighted by the most severely undulating putting surface at Yale, a complex and slippery green set high on a hillside terrace that severely punishes careless placement from the fairway approach. Regardless of the pin’s position on the rolling swaying green, even the shortest putts have an alarming tendency to creep by the hole and wander away. The hole bears a strong resemblance to the famous 9th at Shinnecock. The green is highly undulating so as to furnish a sure landing when a ball reaches it. The play for this hole is to get as much distance on the first plateau as possible in order to make the second shot reach the green… The second shot requires both height and distance.”

A blind, uphill tee shot must carry a ridge to an elevated saddle, which then drops down to a lower flat fairway. Beyond the landing area, about seventy-five yards in front of the green, is a sharp rise to shallow bunkers (the “aprons” of the hole’s original design name) that front a highly undulating green that sits another twelve feet above the bunkers. Because they play uphill severely, second shots are blind as well. The green itself is two-tiered and angled right to left so that any pin placements center and left can easily funnel putts past the hole and into the lower tier.

On the right side of the lower fairway plateau is the second placement of the dawn redwood saplings, of which a single tree remains, now sixty-feet tall. The photo to the left features this dawn redwood in the foreground, with a view through the eighteenth fairway to the dawn redwood on that hole. Originally there were two large bunkers on the hill leading up to the beginning of the fairway, 170 yards from the long tee. These were removed before 1950. Two new short tees were added, one before that area and one just beyond it, about twenty years ago. Some of the trees to the left and behind the green are being removed.