by The 2018 Ryder Cup at Le Golf National, the site of the 2024 men’s and women’s Olympics golf competition, stands as one of the most influential events of golf’s modern era. Three days of competition in Paris resulted in humiliation and soul-searching for one side and triumph and validation for the other. From a golf course design and course fit perspective, I cannot think of a more influential moment in recent history than the 2018 Ryder Cup. That tournament represented a true inflection point for how we understand the sport.
I attended the 2018 Ryder Cup as a spectator, in between interviewing for a role at Twenty First Group (formerly known as 15th Club) and joining the company. Twenty First Group is known for its involvement in supporting Team Europe with intelligence and strategy at past Ryder Cups. I cannot claim any involvement, but speaking with some of those who were involved in both the leadup to and fallout from the event, along with witnessing the action firsthand, revealed how course setups can significantly influence outcomes, especially when the setup is pushed to an extreme. For anyone interested in course fit and predicting golf tournaments, the 2018 Ryder Cup is as valuable of a case study as I can recall.
The United States entered as favorites to retain the trophy. As I’m sure most of you remember, they got absolutely wrecked. After losing the Friday morning session 3-1, Team Europe quickly started racking up points while Team USA went searching, both for balls in the fescue and answers for what was happening. As Mike Tyson would say, Friday afternoon was a true “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face” moment. Europe dominated the Friday afternoon foursomes session, winning 4-0 with none of the matches making it to the 18th hole. After the first day, Team Europe led just 5-3, but the deficit felt larger than the numbers on the board. It was a certified ass-kicking from Friday afternoon onward, with Team Europe ultimately winning 17.5-10.5.
Immediately following the defeat, rumblings emerged of American dysfunction and dissatisfaction. Dustin Johnson and Brooks Koepka reportedly had to be separated after a physical altercation during the afterparty. Within an hour of Team USA’s post-mortem press conference, Patrick Reed was on the phone with a New York Times reporter, expressing his frustration with the decision-making on the U.S. side. Those are the kinds of reports and emotions that surface after an annihilation. Nobody points fingers after a win.
How did the golf course play a factor in the events of the 2018 Ryder Cup? I am a believer that to further one’s understanding in any area, analyzing an extreme version of a particular concept is a valuable exercise. And Le Golf National certainly qualifies as an extreme version of a golf course setup – one that is hyper-focused on rewarding accuracy, at least as it was set up during the 2018 Ryder Cup. So what are the ingredients that made Le Golf National such a hardcore accuracy test, and to what extent will the Olympics play similarly?
The main Le Golf National talking point tends to be that the fairways are narrow and the rough is thick. However, those are only surface-level pieces of a larger course fit puzzle to consider, at least for those who aspire to graduate beyond a Chamblee level of understanding golf course design. The fairways at Le Golf National are not uniformly narrow; most of the fairways pinch where players would typically hit their drivers, taking the longest club out of play for most and mitigating any advantage for long-hitting sprayers. Check out the fifth hole and how much it narrows.
A typical pinch point, as shown at the fifth hole at Le Golf National
At Le Golf National in 2018, wide misses were punished much more harshly than narrow misses, another integral element of the test that week. The distinction between narrow and wide misses is crucial for understanding course fit, but is often overlooked in mainstream course fit discussions. Plenty of golf courses have trees, narrow fairways, and thick rough (think Oak Hill, Winged Foot, Torrey Pines, etc.), but missing the fairway by a yard often yields a very similar penalty to missing the fairway by 20 yards on some of those golf courses. That was not the case at Le Golf National in 2018. The rough was cut so that narrow misses found shorter rough with mild penalties, while wide misses faced thick rough, fescue, or penalty hazards. For example, look at how the par-5 third hole was set up.
The graduated rough on full display in 2018 at Le Golf National (screenshot via YouTube)
In both overt and subtle ways, Team Europe set up the course to place a high premium on accuracy. Implementing graduated rough is overt. More subtly, Team Europe made a conscious effort to push fans back far off the fairways, preventing wild tee shots from ending up in trampled down rough which would soften the penalty for errancy. This setup starkly contrasts with many professional golf stops, where players are often bailed out after a bad tee shot. Trampled down rough, man-made structures, cart paths, and other elements of a setup frequently offer players an opportunity for a free drop into a more favorable location. There were fewer of those opportunities at Le Golf National.
A final characteristic of Le Golf National that flies under the radar are the moguls that line many of the fairways. Not only do the grass-covered moguls provide fans with a better vantage point for the action, but they also result in thick, uneven lies from which it is highly difficult to advance the ball. As the story of the setup at the 2018 Ryder Cup has been recounted throughout the years, I don’t think the moguls have been sufficiently appreciated for the role they played.
Trademark moguls at Le Golf National, which add an extra variance to misses (screenshot via YouTube)
Not every hole at Le Golf National displays all of the characteristics I’ve described, but many do. Check out the opening hole. You’re not swinging out of your shoes at driver on the first hole as errant drives will either find thick rough down the right or bounce into the water if hit too far down the left.
The first hole design shows how distance off the tee is mitigated, while accuracy is emphasized
So there you have it. Those are most of the ingredients that gave the long-hitting, less accurate American team such a problem, ingredients exacerbated by a big mismatch in terms of knowledge and preparation for each team. Whether the architecture is appealing or not is a separate discussion. Le Golf National isn’t a particularly natural-looking golf course, and I can appreciate those who recoil at the sight of fairways that narrow down to less than 10 yards in width at specific locations. But as far as testing accuracy, Le Golf National accomplishes its goal.
Looking ahead to the Olympics, all signs point to Le Golf National presenting a strong test of accuracy, but not nearly to the extent that it did in 2018. The rough, while thick, is not as penal as it was presented in 2018, and is cut closer to uniform length as opposed to being graduated. The golf course is also playing softer right now than it played in 2018, which widens the effective width of fairways and reduces the chances of balls bouncing into hazards.
I’m not outraged to see a milder version of Le Golf National presented at the Olympics and at Opens de France, though I must admit a preference to the harsher style. The 2018 Ryder Cup was a memorable test of golf, and personally I’d like to see future events held there presented similarly. It would bolster the identity of the golf course, which between a fiery Ryder Cup and this year’s Olympics will have built up quite a bit of big-event cachet.
Venues gain historical significance for various reasons, whether through iconic champions or unforgettable moments. I’m excited to see Le Golf National take center stage again this week, in part because of the memories it evokes of one of the most influential tournaments in recent golf history.
[featured image via the Olympics)
This piece originally appeared in the Fried Egg Golf newsletter. Subscribe for free and receive golf news and insight every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
