The 94th PGA Champion-ship tees it up Thursday on the Ocean Course at the Kiawah Island Golf Resort located in coastal South Carolina. The Pete Dye design that is currently best known for hosting the Ryder Cup Matches of 1991 will play to a par of 72. Although the PGA of America lists the total yardage for the Ocean Course at 7,676 yards, it is possible to stretch the course out to a Paul Bunyanesque length of 7,937 yards. Each hole features a set of six tees.
Ten of the holes on the Ocean Course are located parallel and alongside the Atlantic Ocean. The other eight holes are a mere dune away from the water. While there will be major championship issues such as lightning fast greens and tons of intense pressure, the prevailing theme next week at Kiawah Island will be wind, wind and more wind. It is possible that the usual winds of Kiawah will be worth four clubs in terms of distance, and should the wind shift to the other direction, as is often the case, the four-club positive wind becomes a four-club negative wind, meaning a driver-wedge hole just might be a driver-hybrid hole the following day.
Pete Dye is arguably the most controversial golf course architect in the long history of the game. A hands-on builder who doesn”t work off of pre-set plans, Dye is big on target golf as well as punitive golf. In the past, Dye has claimed that his design philosophy is based on the fact that “I try to do things that drive the pros crazy. If you don”t get some emotion out of them, you”re doing something wrong.”
Pete Dye is highly regarded for one of his earliest courses, the Harbour Town Golf Links in South Carolina, a joint venture with Jack Nicklaus that annually hosts a PGA Tour event the week following the Masters. He is also responsible, with some positive prodding from Johnny Pott, for the design of Carmel Valley Ranch in Monterey County. Dye also gets high praise for Crooked Stick in Indiana, the site of John Daly”s out-of-nowhere triumph in the 1991 PGA Championship. Crooked Stick will host the BMW Championship (the old Western Open) in September during week three of the Fed Ex Cup playoffs, replacing Cog Hill.
Pete Dye also has designed two-time PGA site Whistling Straits, its sister course, two-time U.S. Women”s Open site Blackwolf Run, the PGA West course in LaQuinta, and the Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass, perhaps his most controversial work with its famous 17th-hole island green. One year ago the PGA Championship was contested at the Atlanta Athletic Club, and the talk among the professionals centered about the difficulty and unfairness of the AAC”s Highlands Course. With the playing of the PGA Championship at Kiawah Island, the complaints will be louder and more severe. The pros will wish they were back at Atlanta Athletic by the time the weekend concludes. One of the nicknames that Dye has had to endure says it all. He”s known for his “Dye-abolical” layouts as the “Marquis de Sod.”
Golf Digest magazine has a biennial ranking of the 50 Toughest Golf Course in America. The last time the rankings were published, the Ocean Course at Kiawah Island was ranked as the No. 1-toughest course with a course rating just under 80 from the tips. Yet one might find it interesting to note that the Ocean Course, regardless of its difficulty or its windy nature, is a totally contrived piece of golfing art, just like Whistling Straits in Shebogyan, Wisconsin. Kiawah Island looks like an American version of a classic Scottish or Irish links course, yet it is the result of massive earthmovers and bulldozers. Dye has been quoted as saying, “It is completely artificial. I made those dunes.”
Dye has returned to Kiawah Island multiple times since the 1991 Ryder Cup Matches to add some subtle finishing touches to the Ocean Course. In 1997, he made improvements to the course to enhance pace of play as well as to soften up the heavily punitive nature of some of the holes. The grass landing areas for the approach shots were changed to a 419 Bermuda strain, meaning that the ball would stop instead of continuous rolling to low level areas of waste bunkers and marshland waters. The heavy rough around the greens was cut back and made into collection areas similar to those at Pinehurst.
The changes in 2003 were incorporated to change the strain of grass on the greens to paspalum turf grass. It is a heartier ocean grass that not only handles the salt in the sea air, but also is capable of being cut to one-tenth of an inch to enhance the speed of the greens, consistent with U.S. Open putting surface speeds. Dye also altered bunkering on five of the holes to deal with modern equipment and the modern ball. There also have been new tees built on seven of the holes to lengthen the Ocean Course.
So who is capable of winning the 94th running of the PGA Championship? Is it possible that a number like 8-over-par will be good enough to win it if the wind blows?
A steady control player such as Jim Furyk or Luke Donald has no chance due to the length of the course. Bombers who hit the ball too high such as Phil Mickelson and Bubba Watson will be at the mercy of the wind. With all of the gunk located off the fairways, Tiger Woods is just one or two big misses away from shooting in the high 70s. Ernie Els and Adam Scott have the ball striking to do well at Kiawah Island, but with the difficult putting surfaces, they will experience their fair share of three-putt bogeys. The winner will have to be an accurate power player who has some semblance of ability on the putting surfaces.
This sounds like I”m once again going back in time and promoting the abilities of Keegan Bradley, last year”s PGA champion, and Jason Duffner, last year”s runner-up. They do have what it takes to win at the Ocean Course. So does Nicholas Colsaerts, just off a top-10 finish at the British Open. And yet something tells me that we”re looking at another “who”s he?” winner in the Shaun Michael, Rich Beam and Y.E. Yang vein. Maybe Robert Garrigus has a chance. He was second in the Canadian Open last week, is a controlled bomber, and is a good wind player. I guess we”ll know the answer a week from Sunday. What we already do know is the top professionals of the game will hate the Ocean Course at Kiawah Island. That”s good news to the ears of golf course architect Pete Dye.
