Crime & Punishment: How Muirfield Village Illustrates an Oak Hill Flaw

Before I die, I’d like to build a golf course called The Grind GC. It’s going to be a magnificent, 7600-yard golf course. Every hole will be over 400 yards with five-yard wide fairways, and I’m going to label every hole as a Par 3 on the scorecard. If you like a tough golf course that plays over par, you’re going to absolutely love this place.

The Grind GC is going to be one of the most profitable golf courses in the country. Not only are we going to pack the tee sheet, but we are also going to sell customers’ credit card data. If people are gullible enough to enjoy the protection of par, a concept rooted in an arbitrary standard, just imagine all the other things we can cross-sell them!

Ok, I am only joking. I don’t think that all the people who enjoy “a grind” are foolish. However, I do believe that crowd often conflates protection of par with shot value. Protection of par is a dreadful aspiration. It’s the type of goal that leads to contrived golf course setups instead of setups that reward proper play. Maximizing shot value is a much better goal. It requires a nuanced understanding of how the puzzle pieces fit together to present a demanding test of professional golf. Protecting par can be changed with the stroke of a pencil; maximizing shot value cannot.

This week, the Memorial Tournament presents a stellar display of shot value. Muirfield Village strikes a refreshing balance between opportunity and danger. Shots have consequences. No golf course on the PGA Tour assesses a stiffer penalty for finding the rough than Muirfield Village, which normally penalizes golfers ~0.45 strokes. The fairways are not the narrowest fairways on the PGA Tour. In fact, they are close to the PGA Tour average in terms of width. About 70 percent of tee shots find the fairway at Muirfield Village. Well-struck tee shots are rewarded.

To understand the merit of how Muirfield Village penalizes players off the tee, you must dig beyond fairway width and length of rough. The beauty of the design and setup is that Muirfield Village penalizes a wide miss much more than it penalizes a small miss.

The second hole is an apt example of this concept in action. Typically measuring ~450 yards, the second hole tends to have a scoring average around 4.1. Roughly 80 percent of the field finds the inviting fairway off the tee. But if you are one of the 20 percent of players who miss the fairway right or left, making par is no bargain.

Photo via The Memorial Tournament website

A smattering of trees are placed left of the fairway, adding difficulty to shots that find the thick rough down the left. Players who miss the fairway left tend to average ~4.4 on the hole. Missing right off the tee is even worse. A creek runs the length of the entire hole down the right, exacting a stiff penalty on those who find the hazard. Players who miss the fairway right average ~4.7 on the hole, which includes all of the shots that get caught in the right-hand rough. Within that subset of shots, players who find the water average ~5.1.

Is the second hole at Muirfield Village my favorite hole on the PGA Tour? No, but it is a strong representation of a characteristic I appreciate: penalties proportional to the magnitude of miss. This is a characteristic you can observe on nearly every hole at Muirfield Village.

The Memorial is a distinctly different test than what we watched at the PGA Championship at Oak Hill. Fairways were extremely difficult to hit, often requiring favorable bounces to avoid trickling into the rough. Only 50 percent of tee shots at Oak Hill found the fairway. I can live with fairways that are challenging to hit, but the problem with Oak Hill was that misses were not penalized proportionally to the magnitude of miss. Frequently, wide misses were in equal or more favorable positions to tee shots that barely missed the fairway. Oak Hill failed to penalize the outer bounds of players’ dispersion patterns. Well-struck tee shots were not rewarded; errant tee shots were not penalized.

If you don’t believe me, check the leaderboard. Errant bombers like Bryson DeChambeau, Kurt Kitayama, and Cameron Davis all finished within the top five, a testament to the lack of precision required on a setup like Oak Hill.

Muirfield Village does not afford the same freedom to a sprayer. Defending champion Billy Horschel is one of the straightest drivers on Tour. I wouldn’t be surprised if Sungjae Im, another supremely accurate driver, posts a strong finish this week, despite finishing seven shots off the cut line just a couple weeks ago at Oak Hill.

I don’t know what score the winner will post this week, but there is a good chance he’ll be further under par than Brooks Koepka was at the PGA Championship. That doesn’t mean Muirfield Village is any less of a grind. We could narrow the fairways by 8-10 yards and protect par, but we’d compromise on shot value. That is a foolish trade-off.