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<\/p>\r\nThe PGA Tour returns to the mainland as players head to the Coachella Valley desert in La Quinta, California, for The American Express at PGA West. This tournament is unique for several reasons. It is played as a Pro-Am, with each professional paired alongside an amateur for the first three rounds. Additionally, the event utilizes three different courses rather than the traditional single-course setup. Another departure from the norm is the cut, which takes place after 54 holes on Saturday instead of the usual 36-hole cut on Friday. Only the top 65 players and ties will advance to Sunday\u2019s final round on the Stadium Course. Alongside the Pete Dye Stadium Course, the Nicklaus Tournament Course and La Quinta Country Club round out this week\u2019s rotation. The latter two have ranked as the two easiest courses on the PGA Tour over the past five years, making extremely low scores the expectation. Players will compete on each of those courses just once during the week. After more than 50 years of various course changes, the current rotation has remained intact since 2016, with the lone exception coming in 2021 when La Quinta Country Club was not used.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Each course in the rotation shares many of the same characteristics. With typically calm winds and clear desert skies, this event is often described as \u201cdome golf,\u201d creating some of the easiest scoring conditions players will face all season. All three layouts feature four scoreable par 5s and measure under 7,200 yards. They also share similar agronomy, with smooth Poa trivialis greens and ryegrass fairways bordered by a non-penal first cut of overseeded rye rough, followed by a layer of dormant Bermuda rough beyond that.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
The Stadium Course is the most demanding of the three layouts and will host two of the four rounds, including Sunday\u2019s final round. Designed by Pete Dye, it features a challenging set of par 3s, numerous visually intimidating bunkers, and water hazards in play on seven holes. The course also underwent a significant restoration of its greens and bunkers between the 2024 and 2025 seasons, a renovation that contributed to tougher scoring last year, as it played to an average of 0.65 strokes under par per round.<\/p>\r\n
Despite the Stadium Course\u2019s added bite, winning scores at The American Express typically approach the 25-under-par range. All three venues are resort-style courses with pin placements intentionally set on the easier side to accommodate amateur partners from Thursday through Saturday. As a result, this event tends to favor a wide range of player profiles, with success often coming down to a pure putting contest\u2014rewarding those with the hottest flat stick.<\/p>\r\n
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With the loss of the Sentry, the year’s first signature event, this year’s American Express is welcoming one of its strongest fields in recent memory. World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler<\/a><\/a><\/span> will make his season debut this week. He last played here two years ago and finished a pedestrian 17th, while amateur Nick Dunlap<\/a><\/a><\/span> claimed a stunning victory.<\/p>\r\n In addition to Scheffler, 11 0ther top-25 players are in the field including Russell Henley<\/a><\/a><\/span>, Robert MacIntyre<\/a><\/a><\/span>, Ben Griffin<\/a><\/a><\/span>, Justin Rose<\/a><\/a><\/span>, Harris English<\/a><\/a><\/span>, Alex Noren<\/a><\/a><\/span>, Ludvig Aberg<\/a><\/a><\/span>, Matt Fitzpatrick<\/a><\/a><\/span>, Sam Burns<\/a><\/a><\/span>, Patrick Cantlay<\/a><\/a><\/span>, and defending champion Sepp Straka<\/a><\/a><\/span>.<\/p>\r\n Other notables in the field include Max Homa<\/a><\/a><\/span>, Rickie Fowler<\/a><\/a><\/span>, Adam Scott<\/a><\/a><\/span>, Akshay Bhatia<\/a><\/a><\/span>, Wyndham Clark<\/a><\/a><\/span>, Kurt Kitayama<\/a><\/a><\/span>, Min Woo Lee<\/a><\/a><\/span>, Andrew Novak<\/a><\/a><\/span>, and Will Zalatoris<\/a><\/a><\/span>. Thanks to the multiple-course format, a full field of 156 players will tee it up in the desert, making this week a valuable opportunity for those not fully exempt to improve their status and potentially earn a spot in the next signature event at Pebble Beach.<\/p>\r\n The Stadium Course at PGA West was designed by Pete Dye in 1986 and was created as a sequel to the TPC at Sawgrass. It was inspired by the Scottish links-style courses even though it shares relatively few characteristics with links courses.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Dye was given simple instructions when tasked when building the Stadium Course. “Build the hardest damn golf course in the world,\u201d developers Ernie Vossler and Joe Walser told him. Dye indeed was up to the task as when it opened, its course rating of 77.1 was the highest ever given by the United States Golf Association.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Famous for its dramatic features, including railroad ties, penal hazards, cavernous bunkers, and long forced carries over water, the course is not for the faint-hearted. As Dye wrote in his autobiography, \u201cLength alone would not be the ultimate test for the new course, but I believed strategic hazards, deep bunkers, difficult angles across fairways, slightly offset greens, parallel lakes, and desert plants, when combined with cross-current winds, could provide the type, of course, Joe and Ernie expected.”<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n When it opened, it was one of the first venues for the popular “Skins” game which was a televised 4-ball match where some of the best players competed against each other in 4-ball matches.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n In 1987 the course made its PGA debut by hosting the annual Bob Hope Classic. In what had typically been an easy course setup, players were shocked to see an actual challenge in front of them. Players vociferously voiced their opinions on the course. Raymond Floyd called it \u201cspiteful\u201d and \u201chateful.\u201d Tom Watson said he was \u201csick and tired\u201d of Dye\u2019s radical designs. “It requires you to execute shots that no sane golfer should be expected to play,\u201d Watson added. Al Geiberger said that the Stadium Course was like “working through the stages of grief”.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Dye responded, “The professionals forget that the whole idea of a Pete Dye golf course is to require players to hit a wide variety of shots. I\u2019ve always felt that a good player who\u2019s playing well wants to play a difficult golf course because he knows the winner won\u2019t be someone who can just out-putt him.” Dye wanted to truly challenge the best players in the world and give them a chance to display their amazing skills. As he once said about his style, “We’re just giving them the opportunities to hit great golf shots.”<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n The PGA Tour professionals were so adamant about how unfair the course was that they united together and signed a petition to get it removed as one of the host courses. Believe it or not, they were successful as the course was banned from Tour play until it returned to the rotation in 2016.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n In the summer of 2022, the course underwent extensive renovations in which the greens were re-grassed to TifEagle Bermuda and changed back to their original sizes and contouring which had been lost over the years. Also, more than 200 trees from the interior of the course were removed, possibly changing some of the lines that golfers with previous history on the course are used to playing.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Last year, the course featured new greens. The idea was simply to return the green complexes at the Stadium Course to the original plans by famed architect Dye in 1986. To make the changes, PGA West used Tim Liddy, an architect who worked closely with Dye in the 1980s when Dye was shocking the golf world with stadium-style courses featuring deep elongated bunkers, sloping greens, and plenty of water.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n The primary changes involved restoring the greens to their original, larger dimensions, averaging roughly 7,000 square feet, up from 5,000. This restoration allowed for new pin placements and replaced the concave bunker shapes that had developed over four decades with flat-bottomed bunkers surrounding the greens. Although most of the Stadium Course\u2019s putting surfaces had four to five inches of built-up organic material removed, architect Tim Liddy preserved the original slopes and swales.<\/p>\r\n After averaging -2.07 strokes per round from 2021-2024, the Stadium Course played to just -0.65 last year. Firm putting surfaces are expected again this year, making it difficult to hit approaches close and ensuring the course will provide a distinct challenge.<\/p>\r\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/api.betspertsgolf.com\/raw-forum\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/P6_NFL_Playoffs-Assets_TP_GIF_728x90_Play5Get50_NFL_Playoffs_Map.gif\")
<\/p>\r\nPete Dye Stadium – Course History<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n