Hole 16 – Lion’s Mouth

484 yards

Architecture enthusiasts debate whether the Lion’s Mouth, Ben Hogan’s favorite hole at CCC, is its own template or a variation of the Raynor–Macdonald punchbowl. Like the 12th at Chicago Golf Club, our 16th features a huge punchbowl green with two internal spines—one running from the front central bunker and the other from the back right of the green. Unlike Chicago, however, the Lion’s Mouth’s defining front bunker is carved into the center of the green’s front edge, with two “paws” of green surface extending down into the approach on either side.

The earliest known photograph of the course, taken in 1926 and featured in American Golfer magazine in 1927, shows this green and has been used to recapture the height of the punchbowl surround and the width and contours of both paws–the left “paw,” which is shallower and invites a ground approach to feed the ball into the heart of the green, and the right “paw”, which is narrower and guarded by a very steep false front. With the original green shape restored, the internal contours again follow the LaFoy elevations, and those two spines are once more key to how the hole plays and how putts break within the bowl. Without a doubt, this punchbowl has teeth.