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Southern Hills Country Club

Southern Hills is Perry Maxwell’s ultimate championship test—simple in appearance yet complex to play, tough and smart in equal measure

Location

Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA

Architects

Perry Maxwell (original design, 1936); Robert Trent Jones (design changes, 1957); Keith Foster (restoration work, early 2000s); Gil Hanse (historical renovation, 2019)

TFE Rating

Access

Private

price

$$$$

Website

Video

Fried Egg Guides: Southern Hills, Site of The 2022 PGA Championship

10 min

May 5, 2022

Why Is the 12th Green Directly In Front of the 13th Tee at Southern Hills?

Courses

Architecture

Why Is the 12th Green Directly In Front of the 13th Tee at Southern Hills?

4 min read

May 19, 2022

The Fried Egg Golf Podcast

On-the-Ground Observations from the 2022 PGA Championship

34 min

May 19, 2022

about

In the mid-1930s, not many world-class golf courses were being built in North America, much less in the drought-ravaged prairies. Yet in Tulsa, Oklahoma, approximately 150 local citizens had enough disposable income in 1935 to contribute $1,000 apiece to a new country club featuring a golf course designed by Perry Maxwell. Oil baron Waite Phillips donated a handsome, rolling property, and Maxwell, along with his brother-in-law and construction supervisor Dean Woods, drew on Works Progress Administration labor to create a tournament-worthy golf course. Southern Hills Country Club opened in 1936, and starting with the 1946 U.S. Women’s Amateur, it hosted many national championships, including the U.S. Open in 1958, 1977, and 2001. Next week, the club will stage its second U.S. Women’s Amateur.

In preparation for the 1958 U.S. Open, Robert Trent Jones revised a few holes but warned against additional alterations. “You’ve got one of the greatest golf courses in the world,” Jones told the club, according to Chris Clouser’s Maxwell biography. “You’d be a fool to let anyone make further changes.” By the 1990s, Southern Hills had become over-treed, and its bunkers and greens had lost much of their original character. In the early 2000s, architect Keith Foster oversaw tree removal, fairway widening, and green restoration. Then, in preparation for the 2022 PGA Championship, Gil Hanse conducted an ambitious “historical renovation,” restoring many aspects of Maxwell’s design while also making accommodations for modern championship golf.

Take Note…

Life in the transition zone. Oklahoma has always been a tricky place to grow golf turf. Much of the state sits in the “transition zone” between the Northern U.S., where cool-season grasses predominate, and the South, where warm-season varieties thrive. Since Oklahoma tends to be too warm for bentgrass and too cold for Bermudagrass, many of the state’s early courses, including a number designed by Perry Maxwell, originally had sand greens. At Southern Hills, however, a state-of-the-art (for the 1930s) irrigation system allowed the course to be sown with bent from tee to green—a first for the region. The club later converted the fairways and roughs to Bermuda, but the greens retained their bent surfaces, now assisted through cold winters and hot summers by PrecisionAire hydronics.

The West Nine. A long-standing rumor holds that Perry Maxwell initially designed 27 holes at Southern Hills. No plans exist for the additional nine, but in 1992 the club hired Coore & Crenshaw to create a Maxwell-styled nine-hole course on an open plot west of the clubhouse. The West Nine, as it is now known, was built to resemble Southern Hills’ championship course as it stood in the early 1990s. If Coore & Crenshaw were brought back to renovate their work, I assume they would dispense with the existing saucer-shaped bunkers in favor of something more authentically Maxwellian.

From ball dispenser to icon. The clock tower next to Southern Hills’ practice green is now famous enough to have featured on the logo for the 2022 PGA Championship. It has stood only since the 1990s, however, when it replaced a smaller structure that housed a range-ball dispenser.

Watch our

Fried Egg Guides: Southern Hills, Site of The 2022 PGA Championship

10 min

May 5, 2022

Course Profile

Overall Thoughts

In Perry Maxwell’s portfolio, there is a clear Big Three: Southern Hills Country Club, Prairie Dunes Country Club, and Old Town Club. These courses opened in 1936, 1938, and 1939, respectively, and each has its own claim to distinction. The original nine at Prairie Dunes (expanded to 18 by Maxwell’s son Press in 1957) boasts the finest terrain Perry Maxwell ever worked on and his boldest set of greens. Old Town may be his best all-around 18-hole design, maximizing the potential of a good, though not exceptional, piece of land. And Southern Hills, while not as stunning as Prairie Dunes or as brilliantly conceived as Old Town, stands as Maxwell’s ultimate championship test—simple in appearance yet complex to play, tough and smart in equal measure.

Explore the course profile of Southern Hills Country Club and hundreds of other courses

Course Profile

Overall Thoughts

Southern Hills’ greatest strength is its routing. The course follows a winding path, bouncing back and forth between the edges and middle portions of the site. Because of the constant changes in direction, players must recalibrate their relationship to the wind on nearly every shot. Maxwell’s routing also makes excellent use of the property’s most prominent topographic assets: he located four greens—Nos. 4, 9, 10, and 18—on the ridge where the clubhouse sits, and he used the gullies crisscrossing the low sections of the site in many different ways. Every par 4 and 5 on the course interacts with one or the other of these features, often both of them, in some fashion.

While almost all of the long holes at Southern Hills are unimpeachable, the four par 3s strike me as relatively weak. The 11th is the most memorable, playing across a narrow valley that would be too severe to accommodate a longer hole. The other three—Nos. 6, 8, and 14—don’t quite do enough to compensate for the unexceptional land they occupy. This, perhaps, indicates a minor failing of Maxwell’s devotion to minimalism: the par 3s at Southern Hills may have benefited from more aggressive earthmoving.

Gil Hanse’s 2019 renovation brought the virtues of Maxwell’s design back into relief. The hole corridors are now wide enough for players to consider multiple options off the tee, and the gnarly bunkering and contoured short-grass runoffs around the greens lend variety to approach and recovery play. As Hanse himself acknowledges, however, his project was not a pure restoration. The course’s playing surfaces, even its hazards, are as well manicured as they have ever been. As a result, the property has lost touch with its roots as a rustic swath of Oklahoma hill country.

Still, Southern Hills is by no means ornate. The course is straightforward and elegant, refined but not pretentiously so, and it represents a canny compromise between the legacy of the Golden Age and the demands of hosting elite tournaments in the 21st century.

2 Eggs

Southern Hills is an American classic. Its varied topography, ranging from grand slopes to subtle undulations, and ingenious architecture, highlighted by an impeccable routing, make it one of the country’s most compelling championship courses. Design wonks will wish that Southern Hills’ presentation reflected the full ruggedness of Perry Maxwell’s original vision, but its combination of classic design and modern refinement is well executed.

Course Tour

No. 1, par 4, 472 yards

This is one of my favorite opening holes in golf. I explained why in this video from 2020:

No. 2, par 4, 500 yards

A creek crosses the second fairway on a diagonal, creating three distinct landing zones for tee shots: short of the creek on the right, leaving a long approach from a good angle; 2) farther up the fairway but short of the creek on the left, offering a shorter approach from a worse angle; and 3) over the creek on the right, yielding shortest approach from the best angle.

My only critique of the hole is that landing zone 2 isn’t more attractive. From there, your approach shot must not only carry the short-left greenside bunker but also avoid both a lone center-line tree and a grove of trees on the left. If one or two trees on the left were removed, playing short of the water on that side would be a more appealing option.

No. 3, par 4, 444 yards

The hump guarding the front-left quadrant of the green accentuates the importance of position in the fairway. When the pin is on the left, this contour can obstruct approaches from the middle and left portions of the fairway.

No. 4, par 4, 377 yards

This uphill par 4, which plays to a green cut into the clubhouse hill, introduces a theme of Southern Hills’ design: fairway contouring as a hazard. Right where most long hitters will land their drives, a dry gully crosses the fairway. Lay up short of it, and you’ll face an approach of 150 yards or more. A more assertive tee shot comes with the probability of an uneven lie.

No. 5, par 5, 656 yards

During the 2022 PGA Championship, players reached the green of this par 5 in two only 13 times (Scottie Scheffler made the lone eagle). This was the result of both the hole’s length and the difficulty of 1) threading the needle between the fairway bunkers and 2) holding the heavily guarded, boldly canted green.

No. 6, par 3, 226 yards

The first par 3 at Southern Hills was loosely inspired by the Eden hole at The Old Course, but this version fails to leave much of an impression. The green is too simple to bear much resemblance to its prototype.

No. 7, par 4, 443 yards

A Gil Hanse creation, today’s seventh hole replaced a nondescript par 4 that had, in turn, replaced Maxwell’s dogleg-left, reverse-camber original. Hanse’s concept is strategically sound: challenging the creek on the right (unwise as that may be) yields an advantageous angle into a green that slopes from left to right, directly into the same creek. The success of this redesign serves as a reminder that straight restoration isn’t always the best option.

No. 8, par 3, 220 yards

Southern Hills’ second par 3 is no more memorable than the first. It’s vaguely Redan-ish, but because the green is pushed up, low runners don’t typically work in the way they would on a proper Redan.

No. 9, par 4, 395 yards

On this exceptionally tough driving hole, the fairway slopes left as the hole turns right and climbs uphill. Taking on the high-right bunkers can shorten the hole, but getting hung up in them makes par unlikely. At the same time, giving these bunkers too wide a berth can leave you with a punch-out from the woods on the left. In order to reach the broadest section of fairway past the bunkers, you must hit a powerful, precise left-to-right tee shot. Only great ball-strikers need apply.

No. 10, par 4, 406 yards

Because of the strong right-to-left slopes of both the fairway and the putting surface on the 10th hole, it’s difficult to keep approaches from the right side of the fairway away from the bunker and short-grass falloff left of the elevated green. The relatively level left portion of the fairway offers a more manageable angle, but it’s protected by a creek.

The 10th hole enters a secluded valley that Nos. 11 and 12 also occupy. This valley, with a stream meandering through the middle, contains some of Southern Hills’ most exciting land.

No. 11, par 3, 173 yards

The prettiest and most dramatic par 3 at Southern Hills, the 11th plays from a tee benched into the clubhouse ridge to a green perched on the other side of a hollow. There’s no good miss around this small putting surface.

No. 12, par 4, 461 yards

This par 4, touted by Ben Hogan as one of America’s best, arcs elegantly along the creek, following the right-to-left tilt of the land. In counterpoint, the green slopes from left to right, best accepting shots from the right side of the fairway.

No. 13, par 5, 632 yards

As on the fourth hole, a large swale—no doubt a watercourse at one time in the site’s history—cuts across the 13th fairway exactly where long tee shots will land. Going for the raised, well-guarded green from the undulating bottom of this gully is a daunting proposition.

No. 14, par 3, 230 yards

This bruiser of a par 3 sits on a flattish strip of land along the northern boundary of the property. The hole is livened up by the attractive framing of the six greenside bunkers and the subtle, rippling contours of the putting surface.

No. 15, par 4, 417 yards

My nominee for Southern Hills’ most underrated hole, the 15th bends to the left against a left-to-right slope. Because of the importance of holding the canted fairway and avoiding the big, flashed bunker on the inside of the dogleg, almost every player at the 2022 PGA Championship clubbed down off this tee. The severity of the green’s back-right tier has to be seen in person to be understood.

No. 16, par 5, 567 yards

The 16th at Southern Hills is a par 5, with a green sized to accept short-iron and wedge approaches. But since 567 yards is now too short for a par 5 in a men’s major, the hole played as a par 4 in the 2022 PGA Championship. Another one for the “we should have rolled back the equipment 20 years ago” file.

No. 17, par 4, 371 yards

This delightful short par 4 deserves a more thorough exegesis than I can provide here, so I recommend reading Andy Johnson’s article on it from 2019.

Favorite Hole

No. 18, par 4, 491 yards

If there’s an inland finishing hole in major championship golf that presents a more robust combination of ferocity, strategic nuance, and grandeur than No. 18 at Southern Hills, I’d like to see it.

On the left side of the fairway, a 25-yard-wide plateau provides a level lie and a clear, albeit long and uphill, path to the green. As a more aggressive option, players might try to reach a lower landing zone on the right side, next to the creek that crosses the fairway 130 yards short of the green. This play shortens the hole but comes with dual dangers, both of which Mito Pereira discovered en route to a 72nd-hole double bogey in 2022: first, the water; second, a stand of trees between the right edge of the fairway and the green.

The green itself is one of the most dramatically tilted on the course, as Mark Brooks, Stewart Cink, and Retief Goosen all found out at the 2001 U.S. Open.