The Oak Hill Country Club in northwestern New York, the positioning of the PGA Championship that begins on Thursday, has hosted a dozen main or nationwide championships, together with United States Opens, earlier PGA Championships, and a Ryder Cup.
It’s a basic course that was designed by Donald Ross, a revered Golden Age architect, and not too long ago restored by Andrew Green, a high architect whose work has revived different championship venues, together with Congressional Country Club, the positioning of final 12 months’s KPMG Women’s PGA Championship.
On paper, Oak Hill seems nice. But it is dogged by a considerably educational query in golf: Why hasn’t it produced higher champions in recent times? The gamers who’ve gained on the course usually are not a who’s who of hall-of-fame gamers.
Shaun Michel gained the PGA Championship there in 2003, for his solely PGA Tour victory. Jason Dufner, who set the course file in successful the PGA there in 2013, has gained 5 PGA Tour occasions, however has a repute for being extremely relaxed throughout play. The time period “Dufnering” was coined to explain his demeanor, throughout each tournaments and the low season.
The course, in Pittsford, NY, close to Rochester, has additionally hosted two Senior PGA Championships, gained in 2008 by the journeyman professional Jay Haas and in 2019 by Ken Tanigawa, a former beginner who certified for the Champions Tour the 12 months earlier than after turning 50. .
So what offers?
It’s difficult.
The United States hosts three of golf’s main championships, with two of them rotating from course to course yearly. (The Masters Tournament is all the time held at Augusta National Golf Club.) By comparability, solely the British Open, the fourth main, rotates round Britain.
But the United States Golf Association has laid declare to a collection of basic, stout exams of golf to host the US Open. In doing so, it has created a de facto rota of programs, together with Winged Foot Golf Club in New York, Oakmont Country Club in Pennsylvania, Pinehurst No. 2 in North Carolina and Pebble Beach Golf Links in California, together with a mixture of different prewar programs, together with the Country Club in Massachusetts and Merion Golf Club in Pennsylvania. The governing physique has embraced a schedule the place some venues are locked many years prematurely, underneath the guise that the place you win your US Open championship issues to gamers as a lot because the win itself does.
“The USGA has mentioned it’s a must to be 100-plus years previous to host a US Open, and they are going to the best golf programs on this planet, and it is a brief rota,” mentioned Ran Morrissett, a founding father of Golf Club. Atlas, which analyzes course structure. “Who’s to argue the governing physique is making a mistake going to the best programs on this planet?”
But the USGA laying declare to nice programs many years prematurely — Merion, for example, is already set to host the 2030 and the 2050 US Opens — has created a division of kinds: A membership is both a venue the place the USGA hosts the US Open , or it is a PGA of America website, taking part in host to such occasions as the lads’s and girls’s PGA Championships, and, generally, the Ryder Cup competitors.
Has the PGA been left with weaker venues? Some golf historians say that it has, whereas others argue that the image is extra difficult than that, on condition that older programs are being revamped, and difficult new programs are being constructed on a regular basis.
“It’s nearly not possible for the PGA Championship to compete,” mentioned Connor T. Lewis, chief government of the Society of Golf Historians. “Oakmont is a USGA anchor website now. They’ve had the US Open 9 occasions.”
While Oakmont had hosted the PGA Championship 3 times, he added, now that the course has change into a USGA anchor, internet hosting the PGA Championship is “off the desk.”
Still, he is optimistic that the modifications made to this 12 months’s PGA Championship venue are going to current golfers with totally different challenges from the final time, when the PGA was performed at a really totally different Oak Hill. “This 12 months we’ll see Oak Hill at its best possible,” he mentioned. “It’s going to be far more a Donald Ross course.”
Like many nice championship venues, Oak Hill added non-original options within the Sixties and Nineteen Seventies underneath the assumption that extra timber equated to a harder course. It labored for some time, however as these timber grew, they narrowed the fairways and restricted the shotmaking choices.
Other programs additionally adopted this path, together with Baltusrol Golf Club in New Jersey, which is able to host the PGA Championship in 2029. After Phil Mickelson, who has now gained a complete of six majors, gained the PGA there in 2005, Jimmy Walker gained the 2016 PGA there, his solely main. The course has since been restored by Gil Hanse to open it up and convey again the unique AW Tillinghast design.
Like different basic programs which have not too long ago hosted main championships, Oak Hill underwent an in depth restoration that didn’t do many trendy modifications. The restoration of the course by Green, who eliminated timber and opened up the course, may broaden the variety of potential champions this 12 months.
Morrissett, the Golf Club Atlas founder, mentioned the modifications may make a distinction within the high quality of the champion this time. “Given that Oak Hill is extra of a basic Donald Ross course now, it may produce a Ben Hogan-like winner,” he mentioned, referring to probably the greatest gamers of the Fifties. “I like the truth that a considerate participant may win.”
Kerry Haigh, the chief championships officer on the PGA of America — whose job it’s to arrange the programs for a significant like this — concedes that current PGA champions at Oak Hill benefited from the course circumstances then.
Before its restoration, there was “actually a premium on driving accuracy, because the fairways are pretty slim and the tough is often fairly robust,” he mentioned. “With the timber taking part in an essential a part of the problem, the previous two winners weren’t significantly lengthy hitters, however had been capable of management their sport and hold their ball in play.”
Haigh mentioned that the course setup is what issues most. The PGA has put its stamp on robust, however truthful, setups that permit for some thrilling expenses on Sunday. (This stands in distinction to the USGA It units up every course to be a stern — some gamers contend, brutal — check of golf. When Bryson DeChambeau gained the US Open in 2020 at Winged Foot, one of many anchor websites, he was the (solely participant to interrupt par for the 4 days.)
Some historians argue that even going to those basic programs is a mistake for the PGA Morrissett mentioned with the USGA’s lock on older programs, the PGA ought to look to nice programs constructed after 1960, to showcase the number of golf in America. He factors to the 2021 PGA Championship on the Ocean Course on Kiawah Island in South Carolina, a Pete and Alice Dye design that opened in 1991, as one of many extra thrilling and watchable Sunday finishes in current main historical past, when Mickelson held off Brooks Koepka. and Louis Oosthuizen on the 2021 PGA Championship to change into the oldest main champion.
“I beloved the end,” Morrissett mentioned. “A par 5 you can eagle or double bogey? That’s thrilling.”
He ticked off trendy programs like Erin Hills in Wisconsin, Chambers Bay in Washington State, and the newly opened PGA Frisco course in Texas, which is ready to be a hub for the PGA “I feel there is a good symmetry to watching these guys play programs. that had been designed for as we speak’s gear,” he mentioned.
Haigh, the chief championships officer, mentioned that together with these newer programs had been a part of the PGA’s plan. “That’s been our philosophy to combine basic programs with extra trendy programs,” he mentioned, ticking off Bellerive in Missouri and Valhalla in Kentucky, along with Kiawah. “It’s been our philosophy for the 30 years I’ve been right here, and I count on it’ll proceed.”
Still, his focus is on this week, and he is optimistic that Oak Hill will produce a deserving champion. “It appears there could also be extra choices for gamers who do miss the fairways, however they’re nonetheless the identical width as in earlier years,” he mentioned. “We shall see.”