This Masters hole has a reputation as a menace. And it just got tougher

Jack Nicklaus marched up Augusta National Golf Club’s fifth fairway that Masters Sunday in 1995 with resolve. Though more of the Olden Bear on his way to an also-ran finish rather than the Golden Bear who won six green jackets, he still focused on the job at hand.

His eyes strayed to the gallery and suddenly a whimsical grin creased his face.

“What are you guys doing here?” he asked playfully to a covey of journalists mingled among the few patrons along the ropes.

That’s a question for almost any Masters. Why is anyone along the fifth hole?

A long trek over hilly terrain from the clubhouse to a far corner of the course is none too appealing. Besides, go where the action is ... and has anything exciting ever happened there? Go to the back nine, where birdies fly and where, they say, “the Masters begins on Sunday.”

The fifth hole, to golfers, is like a trip to the principal’s office. Nothing good is likely to happen.

Patrons can come through a nearby entrance, but most keep going down the hill to the confluence of Nos. 6 and 16.

Modeled after the “Road Hole” at St. Andrews by club founder Bobby Jones and architect Alister MacKenzie, Augusta National’s fifth never developed the respect of its forerunner. A plus: Patrons can almost always get a seat in the grandstand, even on this Saturday with the leaders coming into view.

But the thing is, golfers with designs on wearing the green coat of a Masters champion must solve the anonymous hole that is a brute.

A brute? No doubt. The hole dubbed Magnolia in the club’s lexicon fits that description, especially after officials stretched the once-benign par-4 by 40 yards to 495 — and still a par-4.

The club’s publications describe the hole this way: an uphill, dogleg left hole with a sloping green. The fairway bunkers are positioned to demand accuracy off the tee. It is a 313-yard carry over the bunkers. The green slopes down to the front and a back bunker catches balls hit too long.

If that sounds like a golfer’s worst nightmare, let Tom Kim provide the commentary.

“It’s the long par-4, right?” he said Saturday. “Yeah, it’s a tough hole. Augusta just designed a golf hole that’s penalizing off the tee and penalizing for the second shot and penalizing around the greens.”

Sounds like a definition of challenging, doesn’t it?

“You just have to hit a perfect shot off the tee, another perfect shot on the green, and have to hit really good putts to make par,” Kim said. “When you make 4 there you really feel like you made a birdie on a par-5.”

Although statistics point to the lengthened 11th hole to being the course’s most challenging, Max Homa called the fifth “the hardest hole out here.” Joaquin Niemann and Scottie Scheffler agree that the fifth belong on a short list of “hardest.”

In Thursday’s first round, the field of 95 golfers played the fifth to an average of 4.547 — by far the day’s toughest. That’s 52 over par and included two birdies, 49 pars, 36 bogeys, 6 double bogeys and two dreaded “others.” Shades of 2021 — that year, the field made only seven birdies at No. 5 the entire tournament.

With the wind not in their faces, golfers on Friday got a mini-reprieve in the second round and the fifth played only the sixth hardest. But Magnolia returned to the top in Saturday’s third round and retained the No. 1 cumulative ranking for the tourney.

Play the fifth like Rory McIlroy and Jason Day — driver, iron from the fairway and one-putt — on Saturday and smile. Take the Viktor Hovland route — second shot into the back bunker for bogey — and see chances for a Sunday triumph dwindle.

Trevor Immelman used the fifth for a springboard to victory in 2008, playing the hole 3-3-4-3 — 3-under par. But Justin Thomas and Brian Harman saw any hopes disappear this year with bogey on the fifth in each of the first three rounds.

Indeed, asked most of the pros their suggestion in improving the Augusta National, and they would be like a mobster on trial exercising his rights: Take the Fifth!

Return, then, to 1995 and Jack Nicklaus joking with journalists and asking, “What are you guys doing here?”

The media had gathered to watch Nicklaus, of course. That day he would be seeking to put a “2” on his scorecard on the fifth hole for the third time in that Masters.

“The hole just got in the way,” he explained of his first two deuces.

A third? No, not even Jack could do that at Augusta National’s fifth.