Trevor, those of us without Polar scopes do it by sight.
How I do it is: I just get the mount roughly on the SCP area, then check the view in the EP (wide angle at first) to make sure I am pretty close, then I tweak the mount until I can get the SCP in a higher power. Then I do a drift align.
Works for me.
Others may have differing methods.
As far as using the hole for the Polar Scope, I imagine it would be fairly good as long as the hole is long. At least it will get you in the right area for drift aligning.