Fifty years up for this corner of paradise

That is the closest anyone other than competitor, caddie, referee or greenkeeper gets during the four days of the Masters to the 12th green, focal point of what became known as Amen Corner, the most famous grouping of holes in golf.

'It's immensely, almost alarmingly quiet,' Ben Crenshaw, a two-time Masters champion says of the green at the par three.

'The only thing you can hear is your heartbeat and the heartbeats of your fellow players and caddies. There is no spot like it in major championship golf.'

Just 155 yards away on the tee, behind which spectators congregate, you can lose the Masters in a heartbeat.

The winds swirl so capriciously among the dogwoods and tall pines in this priceless corner of Georgian real estate that nature can overcome judgment to dispatch a tee shot into the watery grave running in front of this cathedral of golf.

The sight of a ball trickling down the slope into Rae's Creek is one that generations of TV golf fans have watched with dismay or devilish glee depending on the victim — or, memorably in the case of Fred Couples, the beneficiary.

A blade of grass stopped what might have been a crippling fate for his ball on his way to his 1992 victory. 'The biggest break of my life,' Couples called it.

Amen Corner celebrates its 50th birthday this week. It is half a century since American golf writer Herbert Warren Wind, reflecting on the drama of a rules controversy involving Arnold Palmer, penned the phrase.

The writer had borrowed the term from a jazz version of a spiritual Shoutin' in Amen Corner.

Members of Augusta National originally referred to the holes as 'the water loop'. The Augusta Chronicle did not pick up the term Amen Corner until 1965; the next mention did not come until a decade later in the New York Times.

To the purists, Amen Corner is the second half of the 11th, the short 12th and the first half of the 13th.

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Although the 12th takes centre stage, the most famous event to take place among the former indigo plantation was when Larry Mize chipped in from 140 feet to the right of the 11th green to beat Greg Norman in a play-off.

Norman said of the freak shot: 'I didn't think Larry would get down in two and I was right. He got down in one.'

The 11th green, where four players have recorded a humiliating nine, became Nick Faldo's personal victory platform.

He won the first of his three Green Jackets there in 1989 with a 20-foot birdie putt to finish off Scott Hoch, and secured the title in the same place the following year after Ray Floyd had pulled a seven-iron approach into the pond.

Even Tiger Woods confesses to be baffled by the 12th, at 155 yards the shortest hole on the course.

Three players have holed it in one, most recently Curtis Strange in 1988, but Tom Weiskopf took 13 there in 1980. 'It's hard to describe what you feel on that tee,' the four-time winner said.

'You see one flag at No 11 doing one thing and No 12 is doing the opposite.'

Faldo said: 'You hit a shot and, as soon as the ball is in the air, the caddie starts praying.'

By the time you hole out on the 13th you have technically checked out of Amen Corner. But you can incur a lot of damage before the bill is paid, as Japan's Tommy Nakajima discovered with a 13 in 1978.

'You don't play Amen Corner,' said 1979 champion Fuzzy Zoeller. 'You survive it.'

Or not, as the case may be.