Quail's Contemptuous Familiarity
The 2025 PGA Championship returns to an annual Tour host site and other high profile events. At least the stars are aligning for a big week.
Many wise old souls have been credited with the always-handy proverb, “familiarity breeds contempt.” From Srimad Bhagavatam in ancient Vedic texts, to Lucius Apuleius in the second century, to Geoffrey Chaucer in his wild and wacky 1386 international bestseller, “Tale of Melibee,” great minds saw it all coming: too many tournaments at Quail Hollow will make people less than excited about the 2025 PGA Championship.
Contempt has been oozing out for next week’s host side despite the club having a pretty decent track record of putting on entertaining tournaments in front of energetic crowds. And we certainly have no shortage of Quail Hollow-hosted championships to help handicap this year’s PGA Championship.
Besides serving as the anchor site for the PGA Tour’s Wachovia Wells Fargo Truist Championship since 2003, the club has also hosted a 2017 PGA, the 2022 Presidents Cup, and now, its second major. Long before that, Quail Hollow and it’s beloved George Cobb design welcomed the Kemper Open from 1969 to 1979 followed by the World Series Invitational from 1980 to 1988.
But starting with some light Arnold Palmer changes in the 80s and an onslaught of Tom Fazio meddling in 1997, 2003, and most significantly from 2014-16, players have lost enthusiasm for the course. This happened despite the lavish hospitality and a welcoming touch imbued by Quail’s benevolent dictator, Johnny Harris. His name will be breathlessly praised more times next week by announcers than Wannamaker, McIlroy, Scheffler and Schauffele…combined.
The problem lies with too many changes that players rightfully sense were designed to protect par. There have been occasional conditioning issues due to everything from too much shade to multiple course renovations. A tricky spring-to-summer transition season, when Quail Hollow usually hosts the PGA Tour, has been solved by that miracle cure, ryegrass.
The annual stop has produced the occasional shock winner (sorry to pick on you, Derek Ernst and James Hahn). But overall, the course has delivered compelling finishes and proven champions. The finishing stretch usually produces fun drama as long as you don’t have to play those holes with history and millions on the line. Players also get to hit plenty of drivers at Quail Hollow, which is always a good way to produce a compelling event. More rough next week may place even more importance on the big stick. It’s an intangible, history-approved quality shown to produce better leaderboards and winners compared to those dreadful weeks where it’s all about avoiding a head-on collision into turn four.
Quail Hollow also has a fun drivable four (No. 14), a reachable five (No. 15), and the stern “Green Mile” to make sure no lead is safe. And last year, the course seemed to play better than it ever has during the Harris-Fazio overtinkering era. We saw better fairway lines and a strong overseed that hung around through mid-May to help Rory McIlroy put on a great show in holding off Xander Schauffele.
Yet it’s still hard to get excited in a year with Oakmont and Portrush looming.
The contempt may have less to do with anything Quail Hollow has done. Even its name rings, yeah, hollow. And it’s well-proven that there are no truly seminal works of architecture with an animal in its name. The Quail Hollow bunkering is absolutely hideous and free of any artistic flair. The blinding blemishes should be called “sand traps” instead of a description conveying a hint of naturalness. They exude a pre-fab, assembly-line, helicoptered-in quality that fights Quail Hollow’s original lay-of-the-land sensibility created by architect George Cobb, whose more nuanced touch has largely been lost during the various plastic surgeries, extensions, transplants, and injections.
Last week, defending PGA Champion Xander Schauffele repeatedly referred to it as a “property” instead of calling it a course. He did not mean to insult the place. But after all the changes and lengthening to 7,600+ yards, it feels more like a property than a place to “play.”
“Everyone is obviously excited to get back on property there,” Schauffele said. “You just have to get on a property and you have to feel good, and the vibe has to be good, and I've sort of had that feeling when I'm on property there.”