Jon Rahm: It’s Bermuda rough and sometimes hitting into the rough is not the best option, you can get flyers, you can just lose control of the ball, and end up in a pretty bad spot. It just shows like most of the TPC courses we play throughout the year that tee to green you need to play really good golf. Luckily, it’s one of my strengths. Hopefully, I can keep doing it, but if not off the tee, I think those second shots into the green are extremely important this week. All of the hazards we have in play, most of them are on the second shot. So it’s important that we keep it tight on those iron shots and be smart. You just need to step up there and hit good shots. The scores are out there and you need to shoot low to be able to win here. So you can’t really be scared of the water in that sense.
Justin Thomas: I find this place very similar to East Lake to where if you drive it well, if you hit the fairways, it’s not a very difficult golf course. You have a pretty good amount of short irons and some wedges to where you can control your distance into the greens. Because it’s so important to be putting from below the hole or on the correct side versus when you get in the rough, you’re going to get a lot of flyers or it’s going to be sitting so bad where you can’t get it to the green and you’re trying to get up and down. It’s a place I think off the tee is extremely important because from there you can manage the course pretty well. when you get out of position, you’re really just trying to minimize your damage and not make a big number.
Daniel Berger: You just have to hit it in the fairway, otherwise it’s difficult to get it close and as the week goes on, its going to get firmer and faster so it will be even tougher. The greens feel like I’m just at home and, you know, I love the Bermuda and I don’t even read grain here. I just look at it and see it and it’s just from years and years of putting on it. It’s just extremely long and extremely penalizing.
f684b2f3d4218ee06dad551b3bb2074bWebb Simpson: I think it’s a golf course where if you drive it well. You drive it in the fairway. You’re going to have a lot less chances to hit balls in the water. I think these water balls often come from guys who drive it in the rough on holes like 9 or 15, even 18, even 12. There are a lot of holes where in the rough you have a decision to make: Are you going to bring on the water and go for the green or are you going to lay up? It’s really hard to lay up from 150 yards. So I think that’s probably why. If you look at the winners here over the years, you’ve seen different length players win, long hitters, short hitters, because it’s just like that type of golf course. If a long hitter comes in here, like Brooks did last year, and he drives it well, he’s going to have a great chance to win. But you’ve also seen some shorter guys win here and have success here. Most guys I talk to love this place because it doesn’t really create an advantage for any type of player.
Fabian Gomez: In this course, many holes you have to be really competitive with your driver. And also so many holes you need to play like a fade. Also, it’s a course that usually you have to play with the wind.
Rory McIlroy: It’s a par 70, there’s only two par 5s, — they’re the two obvious birdie chances that are coming up. If you do hit it in the rough, it’s going to be hard to control your ball from there. So first thing, you put it in the fairway and put it in play, but I think the biggest thing around here is your approach play. I think sort of seems to be a lot of approach shots between like 140 yards to 170 yards, so that’s a key distance this week. If you can sort of get your pitching wedge through 7-iron dialed in and get those working really well, I think you’ll always have a good chance around this course.
Ben Crane: This is no golf course to play from the rough. It makes it so difficult. You get a lot of fliers, hard to control the ball. Scrambling around these greens is just incredibly difficult with the rough around the greens. Grainy lies. It makes some of the guys look silly.
Brendon Todd: It’s not overly long and it rewards accuracy. Just even though I only drive it 280, I can hit the ball in the fairway and still attack the pins. So I feel like it’s a really fair course for all the different lengths we have out here and it just comes down to who’s playing well, hitting good shots and making putts.
Lee Westwood: It’s quite tight. You need to drive the ball straight although it does give you opportunities where it’s not driver on every hole as well. But there is a massive premium on hitting the fairways here. I think it tests up every aspect of your game. The greens are immaculate. There’s no excuses for not making putts.
Brooks Koepka: It’s a ball striker’s golf course. I’m lucky enough I can hit 3-wood and 3-iron on holes where guys are hitting driver and 3-wood to the same spot. If you’re hitting 3-iron and 3-wood, you should be able to hit the fairway just about every time.
Phil Mickelson: Risk-reward is a critical part of this golf course, but sometimes you have to just man up and hit shots and you pull them off and make birdies, and if you don’t, you end up hitting the water. There’s water in play and strategically placed or well-placed water right up on the edge of the green on a number of holes that kind of sneak up on you. That’s where I talk about how precision is important here. It doesn’t beat you up with length, but you’ve got to have total control of your ball flight or else water will be in play.
Brandt Snedeker: You’re going to miss the greens here, the greens are very small, greens are tough to hit. So you have to understand you’re going for miss four, five greens a day here, that’s just the way it is. Got to be able to get it up and down.
Dustin Johnson: It’s a golf course where you’ve got to hit pretty much every club in the bag. You’ve got to drive it well, that’s first and foremost. If you’re not playing out of the fairway it’s going to be a long day. Even the rough’s not that deep, but it’s Bermuda rough, the ball always sits down. It’s tough to judge how it comes out.
Harris English: This is one of my favorite courses on Tour. I feel like this is the most underrated course we play all year. Very familiar with the grass out here, bermudagrass, Zoysia fairways and it’s just one of those courses that suits your eye. I feel like it plays the game that I like to play, more strategy, get the ball in the fairway. I love small greens and these greens don’t have a whole lot of humps and bumps in them. They’re very flat and I feel like I can make a lot of putts out here. It doesn’t matter if you’re 25 feet, 30 feet. A lot of these putts are pretty straight and they’re relatively easy to read.
Michael Thompson: You can catch a lot of the flyers, which takes spin off as well as, if the ball’s sitting down, it can come out just really dead. So it’s just really hard to judge how the ball’s going to react off the clubface. Any time there’s doubt like that in a professional golfer’s mind, that’s when golf becomes difficult, because there’s options, right? We can use different clubs and try to hit different shots. And on top of that, some of these greens are pretty small, so the landing area in order to get it close or just get it on the green is not very big. It just makes you think, and I think that’s what makes it difficult.
Photo courtesy TPC Network