Jan 13, 2022 · The Nine Hardest Courses on the PGA Tour. 9. Waialae Country Club — .513 strokes over par. pinterest-pin-it. Waialae Country Club is the home of the Sony Open. Kyle Terada-USA Today Sports. 8 ...
Sep 08, 2020 · Even with the modifications, the Oaks Course ranks among the toughest of all of the tracks operated by the PGA Tour TPC Network. East Lake Golf Club – The TOUR Championship Earning a tee time at the TOUR Championship means you have advanced through the FedEx Cup Playoffs and are among the top 30 in points.
May 21, 2013 · The course has recently been lengthened to nearly 7,300 yards, and its tight fairways, elevation changes and undulating greens have proven more than enough protection for the difficult layout.
Aug 03, 2018 · Frequently voted the best golf course in the world outside the United States, Royal County Down is also one of the toughest in the world. Its fairways are narrow strips bordered by purple heather...
Pete Dye didn’t design golf courses for the faint of heart , and none of his creations are as diabolical as his gem in Ponte Vedra Beach. Once the PGA Tour relocated THE PLAYERS to the Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass, it’s not just a coincidence they haven’t looked back.
Since the Honda Classic was moved to PGA National Golf Club in 2007, there are certain players who simply skip this event. They know the Champion Course is excruciatingly difficult, and they know the conditions are going to be windy throughout.
Let me preface this segment by telling you that Greg Norman and Sergio Garcia co-designed the Oaks Course at TPC San Antonio. Norman is arguably the greatest driver of the golf ball we’ve ever seen, and Garcia is right up there as well.
Originally designed by Donald Ross and reconstructed by Rees Jones (1995), this par-70 features four par 3s that each measure at least 197 yards. #9 (the old #18) is the toughest of the bunch at 235. Guarded by sand traps right and left of the green, there’s nowhere to bail out.
Jack Nicklaus is one of the toughest golfers in PGA Tour history, so you can expect his own PGA Tour event to be played on a course of significant challenge. That exactly is Muirfield Village, a course worthy of the game's greatest golfer and a true test to today's professionals.
The youngest course on the list, the TPC San Antonio just began hosting the Valero Texas Open four years ago, and already it’s billed as one of the stiffest challenges on the PGA Tour circuit.
There are few, if any, courses like Harbour Town Golf Links on the PGA Tour. The unique Pete Dye-designed layout plays host to the RBC Heritage each April the week following The Masters, providing a worthy, albeit completely different, test compared to Augusta National
For far too long, the Old White TPC course at the Greenbrier Resort was denied its place as a traditional PGA Tour site. Now that it has it, there is no denying this world- class course its place as one of the most challenging layouts in professional golf .
Jude Classic every June, the TPC Southwind serves as the perfect tuneup for the U.S. Open, challenging golfers with its considerable length (7,244 yards) and its numerous water hazards.
Though a relatively new addition to the PGA Tour fraternity of host courses, Quail Hollow owns a significant history and a hefty amount of respect that places it among the elite layouts challenging present-day professional golfers.
Muirfield Village. Jack Nicklaus is one of the toughest golfers in PGA Tour history, so you can expect his own PGA Tour event to be played on a course of significant challenge. That exactly is Muirfield Village, a course worthy of the game's greatest golfer and a true test to today's professionals.
courtesy Le Touessrok golf course. Designed by two-time Masters champion Bernhard Langer of Germany, Le Touessrok golf course is set on its own island and is the only one I know that cannot be reached by road, only by speed boat or helicopter. It's stunningly beautiful but also extremely tough.
Yes, 967 bunkers on one course. That's an average of almost 54 per hole. Some of them are so small there's barely room for golfer and ball. Some of them are barely recognizable as bunkers, as Dustin Johnson found to his cost playing the final hole at the 2010 US PGA Championship with a one shot lead.
The Ocean Course, Kiawah Island, South Carolina, United States . The Ocean Course is one of the world's most famous courses. Top on our list has to be the Pete Dye-designed Ocean Course. Dye designs golf courses so difficult and torturous that he's earned the nickname "The Marquis de Sod.".
Another Pete Dye-designed exercise in masochism, Whistling Straits is suitably located on the site of an abandoned artillery range on the shores of Lake Michigan. When current world No. 3 Lee Westwood first saw the course he said, "I'd been told there are 10 difficult holes and eight impossible ones.
Matt Turner/Getty Images Europe/Getty Images. The Palm Course at Saujana is so tough it's been nicknamed "The Cobra" and its fangs have tested many of the world's top golfers as it's hosted six of the last 13 Malaysian Opens, a co-sanctioned European/Asian Tour event.
Bethpage Black, New York, United States . For the "highly skilled," or foolhardy, only. This course, one of five at Bethpage State Park in Long Island, New York, is so tough it has a sign by the first tee that reads "The Black Course Is An Extremely Difficult Course Which We Recommend Only For Highly Skilled Golfers.".
Cape Kidnappers isn't just a tough golf course, it's a dangerous golf course with 183-meter cliffs plunging straight into the sea close to the edge of several fairways. Designed by Tom Doak with many holes completely exposed to winds whipping in off the Pacific Ocean just keeping your ball on line is tough.
Open rotation are challenging, the South Course at Torrey Pines is among the most demanding. The length alone, which spans more than 7,800 yards from the black tees, makes it a test of physical endurance unlike many other courses used by the PGA Tour. The par-72 venue boasts a USGA rating of 78.8 and challenges players to stop their approach shots on greens that sit right against the edge of cliffs over the Pacific Ocean. Tight fairways and deep bunkers that seem unavoidable await anyone that plays at Torrey Pines South.
Precision putting is the name of the game at Oakmont Country Club, where getting on the dance floor is where the fun really starts. This Pennsylvania landmark, which has been testing golfers since the early 1900s, is a par-70 layout with a USGA rating of 75.3 and a bogey rating of 101.1 from the non-professional tees, meaning average golfers have virtually no chance at a respectable score. While the fairways aren’t particularly tight, the rough comes into play often because of slopes, and the approach shots require a local caddie’s knowledge to hope for anything close.
The par-72 course holds a USGA rating of 77.2 from the farthest tees and a bogey rating of 104.6, which would be considered a solid score from those tees by an average player. The whole round at Quail Hollow is challenging, but the nightmare really begins at hole No. 16, where the three-hole closing stretch is dubbed “The Green Mile.” All three holes beg players to lose a ball in the water, as the greens are surrounded by a lake and a creek.
Long Island’s Bethpage State Park is home to five 18- hole courses, with some genuine challenges among them. The Bethpage Red Course has a brutal USGA rating of 74.4 from the back tees, but the Black Course’s rating of 77.5 beckons confident players from all over. Bethpage Black plays mind games with its challengers before the first tee shot is taken, thanks to an infamous sign that reads, “Warning: The Black Course is an extremely difficult course which we recommend only for highly skilled golfers.”
Kansas State alum Jim Colbert co-designed it to be the toughest college course in the country. It's constantly blasted by a fierce south wind that can blow the hairpiece right off your head.
The names of the nines say it all. There's also a third nine, called the Mindbreaker. When we played here, we thought of some other names for these courses, too.
Pete Dye, 81, has been torturing golfers for half his life, and the Ocean Course, strung along the Atlantic coastline with fairways and greens perched above sand, sea oats and sweetgrass, is perhaps his most Dye-abolical design. (Eight of our top 50 were created by the man they call the "Marquis de Sod.")
At one time, the Black was what public golf courses were like when we were kids, with hardpan fairways, crabgrass greens and pockmarked tees. After being revamped by Rees Jones for the 2002 U.S. Open, it's in much better shape, but still big and brawny--a 6 1/2-mile hike over hill and dale where no carts are allowed--with massive bunkers and tiny greens, several of them hidden from view, even from the center of some fairways. The Black's magic is that it makes us all feel like kids again, inadequate to the task. It's New York tough.
This is Mike Strantz's version of Pine Valley, as seen through a funhouse mirror. Bunkers become craters, greens become sinkholes. The sand hills are taller and more eroded, the pits are steeper and deeper. Some greens are three times as wide as they are deep, and others are twice as long as they are wide. What's not distorted is that there are five blind shots at Tobacco Road. That makes it cotton-pickin' hard.
There used to be a hangman's noose on a tree behind the 16th green--many competitors in the 1988 PGA, in 100-plus-degree heat, must have been tempted to use it. It's gone now, and the greens have been softened, but the ponds, pot bunkers and punishing rough remain.
Another Trent Jones Trail killer, named for Joe Wheeler, the only Confederate general to attain the same rank later in the U.S. Army (he volunteered in the Spanish-American War at 62). Good thing the ninth hole doesn't return to the clubhouse, because many golfers would probably surrender at the turn. Fighting Joe always wins.
With an eight-shot buffer, McIlroy beat a stacked field that succumbed to the course. He also set a record for margin of victory, besting the one set by Jack Nicklaus when he won his fifth P.G.A. Championship in 1980.
Rodman Wanamaker, whose wealth came from owning department stores, was one of the founders of the P.G.A. of America, which began in 1916 as a trade organization for professional golfers. “The P.G.A. is less bound by the history of golf.