US Masters - Focus on 13th hole

Come Sunday afternoon, the Par 5 13th hole - where players make their escape from Amen Corner - will be a cauldron of noise. For this classic risk-and-reward hole of 510 yards, very much on in two for players who find the fairway and sometimes even when the ball nestles in the pine straw down the right, has the capacity to hand out birdies, eagles . . . . or bogeys and worse!

Robert Trent Jones, the great golf course designer, once referred to the 13th at Augusta National - known as Azalea - as "perhaps the best short Par 5 ever built." And, through the years, it has provided more than its share of captivating drama, delivering joy with one hand and agony with the other.

The hole doglegs left with towering cathedral pines on either side of a generous fairway and with the creek hiding in the trees down the left. For anyone to finds the fairway, sensing the opportunity for an eagle, the overwhelming temptation is to go for the green in two. But it is not as simple as that, of course. Rae's Creek winds its way in front of the green and the unfortunate Tommy Nakajima's claim to fame in these parts is for running up a 13 on the hole in 1978. Against that, Jeff Maggert fashioned an albatross two in 1994.

This hole has been responsible more often than any other for the roars that spur on a champion's run home. It was here in 1996 that Nick Faldo's two-iron approach set him up for an eagle that killed off Greg Norman and, more recently, it was on the 13th that Phil Mickelson - in 2010 - produced one of golf's iconic shots when he threaded his approach shot off the pine straws through the tiniest of gaps between trees to find the green in two.

"I had to hit a shot between those two trees, whether I laid up or went for the green. So I just decided to hit it 90 yards farther than a lay-up," recalled Mickelson, who hit a six-iron - facing a shot of 207 yards to the hole and 180 to clear the creek - that found the green. "It was a shot where I kept saying if I just trust my swing, I will pull it off." Mickelson two-putted for birdie and went on to claim a three-shot win over Lee Westwood and claim his third Masters title.

It is one of two Par 5s - along with the 15th - on the back nine that offers players the chance to be aggressive and to get momentum for the final stretch.