Daniel Berger: You look at the historical scoring here, it’s pretty low, and that translates into just making birdies. You’re not going to hit it to three feet on every hole; you have to hole footage of putts. Obviously, Zach (Johnson) is a great putter, Steve (Stricker) is a great putter. You look at the guys that have won recently or throughout the history of the event, they’re all great putters. I think that’s going to be probably the biggest category of relationship to how they finish, and then also wedge play. You look at the guys that have won here and they’re also really good wedge players. I think those are the two main keys to this golf course, wedging it well and putting it well.
Cameron Davis: It’s really important to be in the fairway because from that point you can pretty much go at any flag at the moment. They’re just sticking on the greens. The wedges are spinning. The greens are really nice. If you hit a putt on line it’s going to go in every time at this point. You just need to get the ball in play off the tee. You just need to kind of stay out of the rough. The rough is rough. It gets kind of squirrelly, and it’s hard to read the lies. So keeping in the short grass is important, but that’s the case most weeks that you can definitely get on a good run and make a lot of birdies, because there’s a lot of short irons, as well, just by hitting the fairway.
f684b2f3d4218ee06dad551b3bb2074bZach Johnson: You’ve got to really hit fairways. There’s certain courses where it becomes very evident that it’s a first-shot golf course or a second-shot golf course. I think currently right now it’s going to be kind of both. But getting the ball in the fairway right off the bat is going to be a priority. The golf course is fairly predictable, and I mean that in the most positive of manners. This is a place that the turf is just pure. The grass, the soil is really good for golf, for bentgrass, for Kentucky blue rough. It’s pure.
Brian Harman: It’s a great golf tournament on a great course and they haven’t tried to reinvent the wheel with it. If we get good weather and no wind, the scores are going to be low. But the scores are low here because the greens are so good, and it’s easy to make putts. I think it’s important that people don’t look past that. That’s the reason why the scores are low here is not because the course is easy, it’s just because the greens are perfect. There’s just a lot of putts that get made, and that’s okay.
Chez Reavie: It’s a golf course that really rewards hitting fairways and greens. You have to give yourself looks. If you start missing greens out there it’s really easy to make bogey. You’re going to have to make birdies. The biggest thing is just to not make bogeys. It’s easy to make bogeys out there if you hit it in the rough, and so if you don’t make bogeys you have plenty of birdie opportunities. You’ve got to give yourself some good angles. You have to know some of the pins you can’t go at, even if you have a 9- or 8-iron. You still to kind of look middle of the green because if you miss the green it’s an instant bogey.
Michael Kim: If you look at kind of the guys that have done well here going back, guys like Steve Stricker, Zach Johnson, Jordan Spieth, you know, guys that don’t necessarily bomb the ball, but with good wedge game and putting they can do good out here. Greens are great. They’re soft, they’re rolling true, and they’re bent greens, so you just got to hit it on your line.
Bryson DeChambeau: You got to be hitting your wedges really close. If you can do that all week, you’ll be just fine. If you can make pars on the tough par-3s, I think you have a very good chance of playing well here.
Ryan Moore: It’s a course I’ve really grown to like over the years. I played it early in my career, and I took a few years kind of off in the middle, and when I came back and started playing it again, I don’t know, I appreciated it more for some reason or another. Maybe I’ve learned over the years the type of golf courses that are good for me and that set up well for me, and this is definitely one of them. The golf course has enough angles that you can force it down there a little bit farther. They’re pretty difficult tee shots, so guys that hit it significantly farther than me don’t have a huge advantage on a golf course like this. I enjoy the course. I like bent greens a lot. These are honestly some of the best we putt on every single year.
D.A. Points: For lack of a better term, it’s a putting contest and that’s why Steve Stricker and Zach Johnson win a lot because they make everything. I shoot under par every time I come here; it’s just not under par enough to see the weekend.
Keegan Bradley: Yeah, you really need to be ready to go from the first tee to the last, because you’re going to have to make a bunch of birdies on this course this week to contend, but most importantly, you’ve got to hit the ball on these fairways. They are generous fairways, but if you do hit the ball in the fairway, you’re going to be able to basically attack every pin position right now because of the softness.
Wesley Bryan: It’s nice having really good bent greens to putt on that are soft so you don’t really have to worry about the ball rolling out or skipping through the green or anything. You can just kind of take dead aim and hit it.
Patrick Rodgers: It’s a tricky balance because this course is not that easy. The reason the scores are lower is because the greens are softer and there is typically not a whole lot wind. The rough is up and it’s not a piece of cake. You just have to play some good golf and be good with your wedge game when you have some opportunities from the fairway.
Dylan Frittelli: If you don’t hit it in the fairway around there, you’re not going to be able to control the ball into the greens and it’s going to be tough to make birdies. In that sense if you can hit it in the fairway, I think it makes the course extremely scorable and you can make a lot of birdies.
Tom Gillis: You get a lot of short irons, so your wedge game inside 140 yards. If you got that dialed in and you can convert making eight-, ten-footers, you got a shot at shooting something low.
Photo courtesy of TPC Deere Run