Monday At The PGA: Oak Hill Looks Superb
The beautifully executed new/old 15th will be one of the wilder holes in major golf. Plus, the potential for incoming neighborly golf balls and other notes from Rochester.
Glory’s Second Shot has begun!
Monday started with a short frost delay before a lovely spring day to kicked off the 2023 PGA Championship. Let’s get the bad news out of the way: lows are expected in the 30’s Wednesday and Thursday, meaning a delayed start to round one is a possibility.
On-site forecaster Stewart Williams noted this in his latest on-site five-day forecast:
As for the venue and high hopes Oak Hill could rejoin the roster of replenished classics, everything I saw on Monday exceeded expectations.
What an upgrade and stage for a championship. Especially if the wind potentially offsets the expected springtime softness.
Superintendent Jeff Corcoran and crew have the place in stunning condition for so early in the season. And photos do no do justice to the architectural details that have injected new life into the lost Ross gem. As the day wore on I just couldn’t stop thinking about how much fun it would be to drop a bucket of balls around these greens and try different shots all day. In my world, that’s the ultime compliment for a green and not what I expected after seeing the course bathed in rough around saucers.
The tee shots offer 26-28 yards of fairway width, which should encourage driver despite the intense rough topped off in a Sunday evening mowing. The stuff is so healthy it can even be work to walk through. Still, we know the best majors allow for the driver to be hit and combined with its par 70, 7,394 yardage, I expect to see a lot of aggression off the tee. As does the PGA’s setup leader.
“With the reduction of trees now lining the fairways,” says Kerry Haigh, “this may allow players to be a little more aggressive from the tee while still placing a lot of importance on hitting the fairways to allow for a more controllable approach.”
The most pleasant surprises: the increase in short grass run-offs along with a number of old school “dolomite” mounds off fairways and greens in an ode to early Ross courses. I don’t know how many of these bumps were original or invented, but they add some understated sizzle in key spots and only one group on 17 might have pushed the limits of proportionality:
The bunkering also looks much better in person than in photos. The sand is more beige than white and the abrupt shapes flattened out in the two-dimensional photos are actually quite attractively irregular and eye-catching. And even after the final pre-tournament mowing, they also come off way less manufactured in person than via the camera lens.
But most impressive of all are Oak Hill’s wings, corners and graceful Ross putting surface rolls. With Green’s background in the contracting world, I was concerned that there might not be enough of the handcrafted touches that make Ross courses so enduring. And while some of the grass lines are hard edged due to the grass varieties and deep green of spring, the green contours are fascinating without going anywhere over-the-tope (under the expected speeds).
In most instances these bumps and gentle ridges allow a player to work balls into pins. But they also severely penalize a miss-hit by leaving players with a tough two-putt.
A handful of short grass areas felt a tad forced, but most will liven things up and take a big miss farther from the green. Instead of just bathing everything in hack-out rough, the tightly-mown bentgrass still gives a crafty player the chance to get up-and-down. I’m not saying all the guys will suddenly go all Ray Floyd and hit fun little compressed bumps and volleys, but there will be times creativity is rewarded.
Defending champion Justin Thomas believes players will not be fazed.
“You definitely have an option of a wide variety of shots around the greens,” he said Monday. “A lot of it is very situational around the greens.
“All of us are gamers enough to where we assess the lie and then from there, the pin, the wind, and go from there.”
This And That
John Daly has withdrawn from the championship and Stephan Jaeger of Germany is now in the field. That’s three former champions who have WD’d (Dufner, Daly, Kaymer).
A pre-round interview with Dustin Johnson has been added to the Wednesday schedule at 11:30 am ET. Better known as the LIV Tulsa victory bounce! Not that anyone saw it after the CW left a playoff for reruns and informercials.
Bryson DeChambeau has a new swing coach in Dana Dahlquist and a new caddie as well. Thoughts and prayers to Dana.
Bill Fields talked to Lee Trevino about his 1968 U.S. Open win at Oak Hill.