Chocolate Drops: How the Restored Tree on No. 6 at TPC Sawgrass Affected Play

Let’s start the week with a few tidbits from the world of golf course design:

→ At this past week’s Players Championship, the big architecture-related discussion point was the restoration of an overhanging oak tree in front of the sixth tee at the TPC Sawgrass. The original tree died and was removed 11 years ago. In preparation for this year’s tournament, the PGA Tour, under the advice of consulting architect Davis Love III, transported a leaning, 500,000-pound oak to approximately the same spot as the one that stood from 1980, when Pete Dye’s Stadium Course opened, to 2014.

Here’s the current view from the front of the back tee box:

View from the sixth tee at TPC Sawgrass. (PGA Tour)

The restored tree certainly affected play, but an apples-to-apples comparison between 2024 and 2025 is impossible because the hole was also lengthened by about 20 yards. Last year, the sixth played between 374 and 393 yards. Most players hit iron off the tee, averaging 257.5 yards. This year, No. 6 ranged from 403 to 415 yards, and players made up the difference by hitting longer clubs and averaging 274.2 yards off the tee. The tree didn’t limit raw distance because the hole has never allowed for indiscriminate bombing anyway.

The impact of the tree can be seen in other stats, however:

1. Launch angle and apex height. As Jake Nichols pointed out, the sixth hole in round one of the Players saw “the lowest median vertical launch angle and lowest median apex height of all drives on Tour over the past year.” Clearly players had to adjust how high they hit the ball.

2. Driving accuracy. In 2024, players hit the sixth fairway 73.32% of the time. In 2025, they found the short grass 58.24% of the time. Part of this disparity can be attributed to the fact that players were using longer clubs off the tee. Surely, though, the need to hit a non-stock shot also contributed to the ~15% drop in accuracy.

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Now, I’ll never be particularly enthused about a design feature that mandates a certain shot trajectory or shape. I prefer hazards that influence play more subtly and allow for choice. But the Stadium Course was built for a purpose: to host the Players Championship. And these days, the best players on the PGA Tour, with all of their modern advantages, tend to overwhelm nuanced forms of strategic golf architecture.

In other words, if we want these guys to demonstrate that they can hit it low, we might just have to put a damn tree in front of the tee box. Either that or pray for wind.

→ Mackenzie & Ebert are nearing the completion of an ambitious renovation of Royal Birkdale, host of the 2026 Open Championship.

→ In other Open rota news, The Scotsman revealed that Carnoustie Golf Links, long administered by a local council, could be handed over to a group of private investors. The council has reportedly struggled in recent years to raise funds for improvements to on-site facilities. Such improvements have increasingly become expected from major championship venues, both in the U.S. and abroad. Carnoustie’s move away from public ownership has, according to The Scotsman, raised “concerns that one of the jewels in the crown of Scottish golf is essentially being privatized.”

→ This morning, the USGA announced that four of its future championships—the 2027 and 2028 U.S. Adaptive Opens, the 2031 U.S. Mid-Amateur, and the 2036 U.S. Junior Amateur—will be conducted at Sunriver Resort near Bend, Oregon. Sunriver’s Crosswater course, designed by Bob Cupp in 1995, is a fairly strong (if somewhat dated, both aesthetically and strategically) championship venue. Perhaps the pressure of hosting USGA championships will motivate some course updates.

→ Two late-March openings to keep an eye on: after years of construction delays, all 18 holes at the Robert Trent Jones II-designed North Course at municipal Corica Park in Alameda, California, will open for public play on March 29; the Gil Hanse-renovated Championship Course at Royal Sydney Golf Club will reopen on the weekend of March 29-30.