After a scintillating U.S. Open with Matt Fitzpatrick winning his first major and first ever PGA event, the Tour heads back to familiar territory for the Travelers Championship at TPC River Highlands. One of the most favored tournaments by players and caddies, the event attracts a strong field each year, and its huge crowds make it the second-most attended Tour event behind only the Waste Management Open.
TPC River Highlands is a classical par-70 Pete Dye design where shot-shaping is almost required and where players are encouraged to get creative and utilize every club in their bag. It is a tree-lined parkland course with lush wide fairways and plenty of subtle changes in direction. The average winning score over the past 12 events has been 15-under par and has favored players who get hot with their putter and have a sharp short iron and wedge game.
Thanks to its tremendous finishing stretch of holes, it also almost always seems to deliver a climactic ending. 14 of the last 18 events have been decided by one shot or less with five of the past 11 finishing in a playoff. Many fans can still remember last year’s marathon Sunday that saw Harris English outlasting Kramer Hickok after eight playoff holes.
The Field
Plenty of stars show up to play this event on an annual basis, and this year is no different. Six of the world’s top 10 are scheduled to tee it up in Connecticut, led by top-ranked Scottie Scheffler. Joining him is a strong group of favorites including Justin Thomas, Rory McIlroy, Patrick Cantlay, Sam Burns, Will Zalatoris and Xander Schauffele. Finally healthy after missing a couple of months with an injury, Harris English returns to defend his title. After a higher cut-line last week at the U.S. Open, it returns to the usual top-65 and ties this week.
Course 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.
The Course
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.
f684b2f3d4218ee06dad551b3bb2074bIt is a par-70 course that is the 4th shortest on Tour at only 6,852 yards. Immaculately maintained, it has numerous subtleties which 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 and that is one of the reasons so many high-quality players return year after year.
The agronomy for this week features some continuity from the U.S. Open with long 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 actually have water in play. In Pete Dye fashion, the course (mostly on the back nine) does bait 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.
The hole layout at TPC River Highlands is typical for a standard par-70 course with only two par-5s and four par-3s. The character of this course lies in its 12 par-4s, 10 of which measure under 445 yards. Players who have success in shorter par-4s and struggle with par-5s will be licking their chops this week. (My “Hole Breakdown” split which will be posted later in the week will show who those players are.) 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 at 37%.
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. The average overall score for the last five events is only 0.48 shots under par which puts it slightly on the tougher side for average Tour courses. But this is also the course where Jim Furyk shot a Tour record low 58 and Patrick Cantlay shot a 60.
Taking advantage of birdie opportunities, staying out of the rough, and minimizing mistakes is the name of the game at this course. 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.
As for the layout of the holes, the front nine is very pastoral and relaxed with very little deception. Everything is out in front of the players 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 are why no lead is ever safe and why there are so many nail-biting finishes at this course. Holes 15-17 all play around a four-acre lake. The 296-yard par-4 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 each 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. With fairways being the 9th widest on Tour and many holes being tree-lined doglegs, many players club down and use less-than-driver from the tee. Perhaps the bigger reason players club down is the 9th most penal rough that has been grown to 4 inches long for this week.
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 4.4% 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.
Approach
When hitting their approach shots, players will be attacking the 9th smallest greens at an average of only 5,000 square feet. TPC River Highlands has the shortest average approach shot distance of any course on Tour at only 151.3 yards. With 48% of approaches coming from the 125-175 yard range, 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 almost 69%. 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. 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. Last year, 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.
Around the Green and Putting
While the raw stats show TPC River Highlands as being very average in difficulty around the greens, it is actually the third toughest course to gain strokes on Tour in this area. Along with the thick rough there is a variety of tiered small green complexes and collection areas that can make around the green play a challenge.
The green surfaces are a combination of “northeastern” Poa annua and bentgrass. This is not the bumpy inconsistent “west coast” Poa that is often complained about 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.
Image Courtesy of Golf Course Architecture