by It’s no secret that we are in a Golden Age of Golf Course Architecture Content. Like most subjects, the Internet has made a greater range of content and materials on golf course design more accessible. Access is one thing, but real demand has also seemed to follow as more great works on the subject are unearthed, shared again, or even created anew. The downside is that everyone, from the architect to the dilettante, can now think of themselves as an expert. It’s how we have random guys on Twitter lecturing rocket scientists about rocket science.
This expanding interest even has the PGA Tour embracing nerdy golf course architecture discourse. They’ve been rather territorial about coverage of Andrew Green’s work at East Lake ahead of this week’s Tour Championship, but we’re starting to see more and more of it emerge into the light of day. For the dilettante or nerd trying to get deeper into the subject, they published hole-by-hole illustrations with Green’s notes for work he envisioned for East Lake. It might be dull for most of you, and an architect leaving his plans or notes is nothing new. But still, the Tour immediately made this widely available for the masses to learn from, study, and critique. That’s cool.
A thing of beauty. pic.twitter.com/Pao8aP4Nx3
— TOUR Championship (@TOURChamp) August 27, 2024
Some initial thoughts from just a guy on the internet with a platform 😉 – the task of simply renovating or restoring a random course diverges significantly from doing it for a course that hosts a high-profile pro event every year. There are ample notes about creating TOUR Championship tees throughout the piece, pushing them to the other sides of hazards, walkways, and up against adjacent holes. There are notes about buildout room and grandstand considerations. It’s a different beast. And then there’s the anxiety of putting it on display on TV every year, along with having highly opinionated pros, who may or may not be worse than highly opinionated members, ready to speak publicly on your work. Green has already expressed some “anxiety” about how things will be received this week. So far, the impression seems to be that the work was significant. Viktor Hovland noted it feels like he’s defending his championship at a different course. “Just every single hole is different,” he said. “It’s going to take a slightly different game to play well this week compared to what it used to be last year.” Sounds interesting!
A last bit of reaction after going through Green’s notes piece on PGATour.com: I realize there are urban-area constraints here, but the overhead of all 18 really makes the routing look quite monotonous. (Accompanying East Lake pictures courtesy the PGA Tour.) Green mentioned altering some mowing lines to try and counter this, but there is so much back-and-forth, especially on the front. A major problem I’ve had with East Lake is a sense of sameness and a lack of memorability when it comes to different holes and their sequencing. And that’s despite it appearing every single year on Tour in a high-leverage spot. Regardless, it’s great to have architecture, as well as a great architect and some of his materials, be such a big part of the conversation this week.
Restoring the oldest island green in the United States.
Inside the new 15th hole at East Lake.
(Presented by @Accenture) pic.twitter.com/efRp0y7MQ1
— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) August 27, 2024
Fixing the Tour Championship is a cottage industry. It’s not just critics on social media with far-fetched plans, but the Tour itself. They’ve toyed and tinkered with it as much as anyone. Would it be nihilistic to just say it’s fine? That it is what it is at this point? Would changing venues to rotate around actually dramatically improve the event in your eyes, or do you just like to think that would be the case? I’m not sure we’d ever embrace it as this great finale. I think we’d continue to debate what needs “fixing” next. One thing I do think it does quite well is capture the right segment of players who should be there at the end of the PGA Tour season. The overall number could probably be smaller than 30, but right now the playoffs have yielded us a top 10-15 featuring players who posted all-time great seasons at the top (Scottie, Xander), some playoff peakers getting it done in the postseason (Keegan, Hideki), and those who demonstrated year-long consistency on a great-to-good level (Sahith, Sungjae, Rory, Collin, etc.) It highlights a few diverse ways to get there at the end, rewarding a variety of paths. It honestly feels like the right mix for a “playoffs” finale!
What’s not good, however, is all those players giving and getting strokes on the leaderboard at the start of the week. The low gross and low net arrangement seems to make gambling annoyingly cumbersome. It’s hard to take the staggered start seriously, between needing a whole shadow leaderboard for OWGR purposes and the optics of changing the format so drastically after playing the entire season one way. But they’re certainly taking it seriously at the PGA Tour Global Home, where FedExCup Starting Strokes is a full-blown capitalized proper noun now.
I am a big fan of this becoming a proper noun pic.twitter.com/XOFeIxIPqE
— Brendan Porath (@BrendanPorath) August 27, 2024
How long before we can get that sucker sold and branded? Who wants in on sponsoring the Starting Strokes race? Speaking of…
Is there a single prominent or highly respected trophy in sports that is only known by the name of the multinational corporation that sponsors it? They take it all around the country and try to force its significance upon us, but the FedExCup Trophy will just never hit with any authenticity. It could be worse. FedEx could bolt and it could become known as the Northwest Trophy, like my local football team’s stadium.
Embedding with the Challenge Tour for a summer would be one of the last great, unique golf journeys to unexplored and unseen corners of the golf world. Scrolling around this week, I was mesmerized by this overhead shot of this week’s course for the European Challenge Tour. Is this Poland or Polk County?
Challenge Tour this week… a pancake with lots of ponds. pic.twitter.com/C8OSCVBAT3
— Ben Coley (@BenColeyGolf) August 27, 2024
Staying in Europe, we’ve gone from The Home of Golf with the ladies last week to now The Spiritual Home of the Ryder Cup this week for DP World Tour’s succinctly titled “Betfred British Masters hosted by Sir Nick Faldo” at The Belfry. From a friendly and bemused source on the ground:
A plaque at the Belfry, commemorating it as the Spiritual Home of the Ryder Cup
Remember kids, you too can claim any title or honor you want, so long as you put a plaque in the ground or on the wall for self-affirmation purposes.
Still staying in Europe, the Curtis Cup will get some wonderful coffee golf run on Peacock and Golf Channel this week from Sunningdale. The R&A also announced that Royal Dornoch will be the next host site over there, so we’re going to go Merion-Sunningdale-Bel Air-Dornoch consecutively, with NGLA, Pine Valley, and Bandon Dunes then confirmed after that on the USA side. The best rotas in golf exist at the elite amateur team cup level.
Our media friends at Sports Illustrated have teamed up with LIV Golf for a co-branded party at that league’s season-ending event in Dallas. Tickets for the party go up to $13,495.38, which should also get you a spot in the “Faces in the Crowd” section of the next magazine.
This piece originally appeared in the Fried Egg Golf newsletter. Subscribe for free and receive golf news and insight every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
