After a thrilling U.S. Open at Pinehurst No. 2 that saw Bryson DeChambeau hold off Rory McIlroy on the final hole, the Tour heads to the Northeast and back to familiar territory for the Travelers Championship at TPC River Highlands in Cromwell, Connecticut. One of the most popular tournaments among players, caddies, and fans, its huge crowds make it the second-most attended Tour event, behind only the Waste Management Open. The Travelers is a “signature” event for the second consecutive year, and this time it will not have a cut, featuring 71 of the best players on the Tour.
TPC River Highlands is a classical, tree-lined par-70 Pete Dye design where shot-shaping is almost required and players are encouraged to get creative and utilize every club in their bag. It is very scoreable yet will challenge players simultaneously thanks to its penal rough, challenging pin placements on small tiered greens, and subtle changes in direction. Players who are accurate with their position off the tee, who can separate from the field with their wedges and short irons, and who can get on a roll with the putter have the best chance for success. 2019 winner, Chez Reavie summed up the course quite succinctly. “You can shape it both ways off the tee – hit every club in your bag from longer irons to short irons. It’s just a test of all your shots.”
The average winning score since 2010 has been 16-under par and has included a wide range of golfers. There has, however, been a recent trend of more quality, upper-tier players winning this event. The average odds of the last nine winners is +3800 and include elite players such as Xander Schauffele, Bubba Watson (twice), Jordan Spieth, and Dustin Johnson. Thanks to its tremendous finishing stretch of holes, it regularly delivers a climactic ending with 14 of the last 20 events being decided by one shot or less. Last year, Keegan Bradley torched the course, finishing at 23-under and leading Tour officials to “toughen” up the layout this year.
The Field
With this being the third straight tournament as either a signature event or a major, fatigue may become a factor at TPC River Highlands this week. This is especially true when considering the mentally taxing courses and difficult scoring conditions of Muirfield Village and Pinehurst. It will be an intriguing week to see how these elite players will respond following the intensity of the past two weeks. For now, every eligible player in the top 35 of the OWGR will be in attendance.
The headliners will once again include the top names – Scottie Scheffler, Patrick Cantlay, Viktor Hovland, Xander Schauffele, Ludvig Aberg, and Collin Morikawa. Past winners, Schauffele, Harris English, Jordan Spieth, and New England’s own, Keegan Bradley all return to tee it up this week in Cromwell. After missing two shorts putts and blowing a two-shot lead down the stretch, Rory McIlroy has chosen to skip this event and will sit out until the Scottish Open in a few weeks. He is the only eligible player choosing not to participate this week.
TPC River Highlands – History
Designed in 1928 by Robert Ross and Maurice Kearney, the club was originally known as Middletown Golf Club and became one of the most popular courses in Connecticut. By the early 1980s, it was bought by the PGA Tour which hired famed architect Pete Dye to completely redesign the course to fit professional tournament standards. In 1984, the course reopened as the “TPC of Connecticut” and became host to the Greater Hartford Open.
The course underwent another renovation in 1989 by architect Bobby Weed who had Tour players Howard Twitty and Roger Maltbie helping as consultants. The club reopened again in 1991 with almost a completely new front nine holes and was renamed the TPC at River Highlands.
When the field arrives in Cromwell this week, they will find a course that has undergone some “competitive enhancements” thanks to how low the scoring was last year combined with Rory McIlroy‘s comments about technology having rendered the layout obsolete. While length has not been added, six holes experienced significant changes.
“We want the golf course to be a challenge no matter what yardage you drive the ball to,” said Gary Young, senior vice president of rules and competition for the PGA Tour. “So from the longest hitter to the shortest hitter, you’re looking at whether they are basically taking on the same risk for the same reward. Everything we did was, we don’t want to take it away entirely. But we want to make it even riskier for that guy who’s going to try. And that risk should be rewarded.”
The fairway at No. 1, a 434-yard par-4, has been narrowed significantly, replaced with rough, particularly in the area where tee shots tended to settle on the left side. Players will be required to be more precise with their tee shots, with right-handed players likely needing to cut the ball back against a right-to-left slope to hold the fairway.
The par-4 dogleg-right ninth hole was also altered by moving the tee box and changing the angle of the drive by bringing the tree line and houses more into play. The heaviest hitters would often cut the dogleg off the tee and take a more direct route to the green. That will be more difficult now. “I’m not saying they can’t do it,” Young said, “but they’re certainly going to have to take on a greater risk. We also shrunk the size of the green, significantly.”
Other changes of note include the narrowing of the fairway, and mounding added, at the par-5, 6th; a much smaller green at the 103-yard, par-3 downhill 11th; a patch of rough replacing a section of the fairway 300 yards out from the tee at the par-4 12th, potentially taking driver out of players’ hands; mounding added and the fairway narrowed at the par-5 13th.
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f684b2f3d4218ee06dad551b3bb2074bFinish Position and Strokes Gained Course History (2015-2023)
This includes the average finish position and Strokes Gained per round since 2015 for each of the categories. Players are sorted by SG: Total. TPC River Highlands is the 10th most predictive annual course on Tour.
Course Features
Situated about 120 miles northeast of New York City, and around 30 miles from the Atlantic coast, TPC River Highlands is located just outside of Hartford in the town of Cromwell, Connecticut. Beautifully carved into slightly rolling terrain the course gets its name from being situated on a bluff high above the Connecticut River. It meanders over 148 acres with an assortment of trees framing its gently rolling fairways.
It is a par-70 course that is the 3rd shortest on Tour at only 6,835 yards. Immaculately maintained, it has numerous subtleties that add to the strategy and challenge of the layout. The routing of the holes demands certain shot types and shapes. This type of course and design has allowed for a variety of champions over the years. Past winners include bombers and shorter fairway finders, Tour veterans and course “first-timers”, and even a blend of favorites and longshots. Any style of play can have success at TPC River Highlands which is one of the reasons so many high-quality players return year after year.
Said 2017 winner, Jordan Spieth, “You’ve got to work both ball flights. You’ve got to kind of be fearless in playing different shots. You can’t get out there and just step and hit just draws the whole day. It forces you to hit different shots.”
The agronomy for this week features 4-plus inch Bluegrass/Fescue rough and a Bentgrass/Poa annua mixture on the greens and fairways. Numerous lakes and ponds add to the course’s beauty although only five holes have water in play. In Pete Dye fashion, the course (mostly on the back nine) does entice players into taking shots over some of these water hazards. The penal rough stands out as the course’s best defense. Players who end up off the fairway and in trouble will be forced to layup instead of going for the green with their approach shot.
While TPC River Highlands does yield low winning scores (15-under par average the last 12 events) and birdies are there to be taken, it still presents numerous challenges and won’t give anything away. A perfect example of this occurred in 2018. In the first round, Jordan Spieth shot a 63 and then followed it up with a 73 the very next day. Though the course changes should make scoring tougher this year, the average overall score for the last five events is 0.86 shots under par which places it in the middle of the pack on Tour. Good shots have always been rewarded as this is the course where Jim Furyk shot a Tour record low 58 in 2016. Patrick Cantlay (2011) and Mackenzie Hughes (2020) also both shot 60.
Taking advantage of birdie opportunities, staying out of the rough, and minimizing mistakes is the name of the game at TPC River Highlands. Shot-making and creativity are two other traits that matter here. Bubba Watson and Jordan Spieth have a combined four titles at this track and they epitomize those qualities.
Hole Preview
The hole layout at TPC River Highlands is typical for a standard par-70 course with only two par-5s and four par-3s. It has the shortest combination of par 4s/par 5s on Tour at an average of only 432 yards per hole. The character of this course lies in its 12 par-4s, nine of which measure under 445 yards. Players who have success with shorter par-4s and who struggle with par-5s will be licking their chops this week.
That being said, the two par-5s have the easiest scoring opportunities with a birdie or better rate of 38%. The driveable 296-yard 15th hole also presents another scoring chance with a 37% birdie or better rate.
As for the layout of the holes, the front nine is pastoral and relaxed with little deception. Everything is out in front and there are few hazards off the tee. The tough finishing stretch from holes 15-18 is what makes the course special. Stewart Cink, who won the 2008 Travelers Championship, called them, “four of the most exciting finishing holes in a group anywhere in the world.” This stretch of holes is typical of Pete Dye courses as he loves tempting players to hit towards hazards on drives and approach shots. With precise control, hitting toward the hazard usually makes the next shot easier though it certainly increases the risk.
The challenge these holes present is why no lead is ever safe and why there are so many nail-biting finishes. Holes #15-17 all play around a four-acre lake. The 15th is one of the best risk-reward holes on Tour. It tempts players to go for the three-tiered green with water surrounding on the left side and a forested hilly area with bunkers on the right. Both double-bogey and eagle are very possible. The 171-yard par-3 16th hole is in the most wind-affected area of the course and is completely over water with a near-impossible up-and-down if you go long. The par-4 17th is 431 yards and wraps around the pond with a demanding shot off the tee and on approach towards the back-to-front sloping green.
Strokes Gained Analysis
Off the Tee
With TPC River Highlands a shade over 6,800 yards, and similar to other “short” courses we have seen this year, distance off the tee is typically dialed back. It has one of the lowest average driving distances on Tour at only 285 yards. Last year, however, saw the highest average driving distance at over 290 yards, which helped to precipitate some of the course changes. With fairways being the 12th narrowest and many holes being tree-lined doglegs, many players club down and use less-than-driver from the tee as evidenced by a driver usage rate of only 58%.
Perhaps the bigger reason players club down is some of the most penal rough that has been grown to 4+ inches long for this week. And when players find themselves out of position off the tee, they will often have to layup out of the rough to avoid trouble areas around the greens.
Many of the fairways also tend to bottleneck around the 315-yard range, and there are numerous inconveniently placed fairway bunkers. 8% of all shots that miss the fairway incur a penalty stroke, and the course ranks as the 7th toughest for strokes lost from a missed fairway. This quest for finding the fairway has resulted in a driving accuracy rate that is 5% higher than the Tour average. That being said, distance works here as well with numerous past winners such as Bubba Watson (3x) and Dustin Johnson winning this event. Thus, golfers can be aggressive and keep the driver in hand or play it conservatively with irons and woods. But for the most part, players who have control over their tee shots tend to play well here.
Rory McIlroy summed up the patient mindset needed off the tee at this course. “You feel like you have a wedge in your hand every hole. But if you don’t hit it in the fairways and don’t put yourself in position, it can be a little tricky. You need to be accurate here and not feel like you can be super aggressive but just sort of reigning that back a bit but knowing that there’s plenty of opportunities and just to stay patient.”
Approach
When hitting their approach shots, players will be attacking the fifth smallest greens at an average of only 5,000 square feet. With over 70% of approaches coming from under 175 yards, short iron and wedge play will be extremely important. Similar to fairway accuracy, players are reaching these greens in regulation at an above-average clip of 70%. It would seem that those who can repeatedly play target golf will give themselves plenty of chances to have birdie opportunities, and that indeed is the case.
To prevent a complete birdie-fest, the pin positions on the greens are typically in tougher locations. A Pete Dye course is not just going to give away birdies. Many of the green complexes are also angled away from the directional path of the hole. That being said, precise approach play is not mandatory to have success here. Two years ago, the top-10 finishers gained an average of only 0.4 shots on approach for the entire tournament! On the flip side, that same top-10 gained an average of six shots putting for the week.
Spieth summed up approach play at TPC River Highlands and the scoring opportunities available. “You get so many opportunities, you feel like you’re losing to the field if you don’t birdie with a wedge in your hand. But they put these pins in such difficult locations it’s hard to feed it next to it, once you do, it’s difficult to get the right line on the green. So recognizing that the course is 6800 yards for a reason. It’s tricked out elsewhere. We’re going to have a lot of chances, greens in regulations is going to be an important stat.”
Around the Green and Putting
TPC River Highlands is the second toughest course to gain strokes around the green. A scramble rate from the thick green-side rough at less than 51% makes this one of the toughest layouts on Tour in getting up and down for par from those areas. There is also a variety of tiered small green complexes and collection areas that can make chipping from short grass and tight-lied areas a challenge as well.
The green surfaces are a combination of “northeastern” Poa annua and bentgrass. This is not the bumpy inconsistent “west coast” Poa that is often played on courses out west. The putting data shows greens that play right around average in all the major categories. There are less 3-putts due to the smaller green sizes. As previous leaderboards and data have shown, players who can generate birdie opportunities and get hot with the putter have the best chance to succeed here.
Most Important Stats For Success at TPC River Highlands
- SG: Approach (Proximity from 75-150 yds)
- SG: Putting (Bentgrass – Bent/Poa)
- Par 4 Scoring
- SG: OTT (Less than driver courses)
- BoB% (easier scoring courses)
- Bogey AVD (easier scoring courses)
- SG: ARG
- SG: TPC River Highlands/Comp Courses
- Scrambling – Rough
- Distance From Edge of Fairway
Key Rabbit Hole Filters
- Course Region: Northeast
- Course Length: Very Short
- Field Strength: Very Strong
- Field Size: Small Field
- Par: 70
- Event Type: No Cut
- Greens Surface: Bent/Poa
- Green Size: Small
- Rough Surface: Bluegrass
- Rough Length: Long
- Architect: Pete Dye
- OTT Club Type: Less than Driver
- Missed Fairway Penalty: High
- Rough Penalty: High
- GAIN ARG: Very Difficult
- Scrambling – Rough: Difficult
Weather Forecast – Cromwell, Connecticut
