The PGA Tour’s 2021-2022 season will conclude at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta, Georgia with the finale of the FedExCup Playoffs. The top 30 golfers in the FedExCup standings will be competing for an $18 million total purse with players guaranteed at least $500,000 just for making it to the Tour Championship. Coming off back-to-back wins at the BMW Championship, Patrick Cantlay will look to successfully defend the Tour Championship that he won last season.
The oldest golf course in the city of Atlanta, East Lake is a city course that was the home track of the legendary golfer Bobby Jones. It is a lush old-school parkland course that features narrow fairways, difficult bermuda rough, uneven lies and fast greens. It is known as a risk/reward type of course, and is one of the more difficult ones on Tour with birdies typically tough to come by. It has been the permanent home of the Tour Championship since 2004, and it has been held at East Lake 21 times since 1998.
Unlike every other Tour event where all players start on a level playing field at even par, the field this week will begin with staggered scores base on their position in the FedExCup points ranking list. Despite the scorn of most golf fans who despise the staggered start, this will be the fourth consecutive year of utilizing the “Starting Strokes” format which sees players start between 10-under and even par depending on their ranking.
Certain players this week like Adam Scott and Aaron Wise who are starting ten shots behind have no realistic chance at overtaking anyone near the top of the board. This limits the excitement and drama of this final event and makes it one of the more unwatchable golf tournaments of the year.
Course History
East Lake’s proud history began well before it started hosting the PGA Tour Championship. With Burton Smith at the helm, a group of 65 men formed the Atlanta Athletic Club in 1898. The club initially did not have a golf course, but four years after it was founded, it had more than 700 members. The club leaders soon realized the increased interest in golf, and in 1904, acquired some property in the “suburbs” of Atlanta to create a country club. They approached architect Tom Bendelow to lay out the course. The grand opening of the Bendelow course took place on July 4, 1908, on the property that was known as East Lake. The course itself, a sparkling stretch of water surrounded by forestland, was originally the site of an amusement park in the 1890s. In 1913, famed golf course architect Donald Ross redesigned the Bendelow course at East Lake. The remodeled course featured a routing plan that allowed each of the nine holes to conclude at the clubhouse.
After the Ross rebuild, the course basically remained untouched until some changes were made before the 1963 Ryder Cup. Not long after the United States team destroyed Europe in that event, the neighborhood surrounding East Lake began to deteriorate and the course fell into disarray and was mostly forgotten. Fast forward to 1993 when the property was purchased by the East Lake Foundation and the job began to restore the course as a tribute to Bobby Jones.
In 1994, famed architect Rees Jones completed a restoration of Donald Ross’s original layout. Rees would go on to renovate the course again in 2008 and 2016. It has been the permanent home of the Tour Championship since 2004 and is the culminating event of the PGA Tour playoffs. While the course has been around for 118 years, it has stood the test of time and remains one of the most storied and classical courses that is played every year on the PGA Tour.
The Course
f684b2f3d4218ee06dad551b3bb2074bPlaying as a par-70 from a distance of 7,346 yards with only two par-5s, East Lake is a brute of a course. It measures as the 7th longest course in the Tour rotation. Typically a par-72 layout, the 1st and 14th holes are converted from par-5s to long par 4s which adds to the toughness of the course. Built on gently rolling hills there are numerous elevation changes and uneven lies. In fact, from an elevation standpoint, it is the 4th highest annual course. The front and back nines start off playing uphill at the lake. With the exception of four holes, the routing is east-to-west with holes typically playing either into the wind or downwind.
One of the most consistent themes from players when talking about East Lake is how the course is all right in front of you. There aren’t really any doglegs, tricks or quirks. While it is tree-lined, it is open enough in most directions to view other parts of the course. Along with its length, the course will challenge players in other ways as well. It has the second most narrow fairways on Tour at an average of only 24.4 feet. Players who can’t keep the ball straight on their tee shots will have to deal with tricky 2.5″ Bermuda rough which is one of the most penal on Tour. The greens and bunkers were renovated by Rees Jones to more closely resemble Ross’s original design. The greens are elevated above the greenside bunkers are have difficult slopes for players to deal with when putting.
Warm-weather grasses dominate the course as the fairways are Zoysia and the greens and rough are Bermuda. The rough checks in at 2.5 inches and is very difficult to hit from due to its unpredictability and tendency to wrap around the ball. The greens can get speedy but typically run at around 12 on the stimp meter.
Even though water only comes into play on four holes, it provides a scenic backdrop and adds to the difficulty level of those specific holes. Over the past dozen years, the winning score without adding in the staggered start has usually been between 7-under to 13-under. Over the past five events, the average score has been 0.65 strokes under par.
The course itself starts off underwhelmingly with the first four holes being rather nondescript. Once past that early section, the course provides an interesting mix of difficult and easy holes. The par-5s are reachable in two shots and, along with the par-3s, provide plenty of risk/reward opportunities. The last six holes provide quite the challenging closing stretch. The highlights include the island par-3 15th hole that brings double-bogey into the equation on errant approaches off the tee. The 18th is a long par-5 that usually has the tees moved up on Sunday to entice players to be aggressive on their approach.
Strokes Gained Analysis
Off the Tee
As previously mentioned, East Lake packs plenty of length and requires drives to be hit off most of the tees. That along with such narrow fairways are the reason it has an adjusted driving accuracy rate of 62% which is the eighth toughest on Tour. With the Bermuda rough being the 3rd most penal on Tour, there is a high premium on keeping the ball in the fairway. In fact, player after player has remarked on how that is the most important factor for having success on this course. Obviously, distance off the tee also helps which makes Total Driving a key stat this week.
Strategically placed fairway bunkers in the landing zones also add to the challenge as do the fairways that slope against the preferred ball flight off the tee (similar to Augusta National). There are no angles or shortcuts for bombers to take advantage of on this course. It sounds very simple, but if you don’t hit fairways at East Lake, you don’t hit greens.
Approach
East Lake features one of the largest Greens in Regulation (GIR) differentials when comparing shots from the fairway to the rough. It is very hard to get spin on the ball when it is sitting down in the Bermuda rough. The overall GIR sits at around 63% which is the 9th lowest out of all of the measured courses. It is also difficult to gain strokes on approach because greens have well-defined target areas. Many of the green complexes are elevated and undulated, making it paramount to position the ball below the pin.
Around the Green and Putting
Players will have multiple challenges when missing the green at East Lake. The Bermuda rough around the greens is especially lush and very difficult to get a consistent strike with a wedge. There are also numerous greens with shaved run-off areas of Zoysia grass which is a really sticky surface. This makes chipping around the greens more difficult because of how the ball comes off the surface of the grass. Bryson DeChambeau summed up the difficulty around the greens at East Lake by saying, “I couldn’t believe some of the lies I drew around the green. It was near impossible to judge and understand. Really penalizing. It was like hitting it in the water and kind of frustrating.”
As is one of the hallmarks of a Donald Ross course, the greens are sloped from back to front with potentially tricky pin positions on every hole. Downhill putts are especially treacherous. Overall, however, East Lake is one of the easier courses on which to putt. Last year it ranked as the second easiest on Tour for courses that have ShotLink data.
Photo courtesy The Atlanta Journal Constitution