Quail Hollow, what do you think?

[Brock Peyer]

I have not seen nor played Quail Hollow but am curious to see if anyone has and what do you think about it.  I was only able to see about 15 minutes of the Wachovia Championship this weekend but the course and the tournament seemed to be gettting rave reviews.  I am a former Charlotte resident and I work for Wachovia and am curious to know the non-tv-spun opinion on the course and the tournament.  I did see David Toms play 18, that hole must be a bear!!!!

[Nigel_Walton]

I was thinking the same thing. Also wondering if there were any reactions to the other televised course this weekend, the Belfry, which has received much negative press over the years.

[John_Conley]

Gamez said it will be "by far the best course we'll play all year".

Riviera?  Muirfield Village?  Cog Hill 4?  Quail Hollow must be excellent.  Like you, I too was curious and asked someone from Charlotte.  He said it is great.  Evidently there was some Fazio renovation recently.

Would love to play it now that I've heard so many great things about it.  Designed in 1962, that era is somewhat of a black hole.  Even the best courses from then are crowded out by discussion of older gems and nouveau glitz.

[bodgeblack]

Nigel,

I still cannot believe that after all the expense of the make-over at the Belfry, which undoubtedly improved the course immeasurabley that they did not address #17 tee shot!

What an awful tee-shot having to play to a fairway that is 20 yards wide and at right angles to you.

cheers

jamie

[Ken_Cotner]

I was at the tournament Saturday.  Didn't tour nearly as much of it as I would have liked, but I was impressed with what I did see.  I liked the look of the greens -- mostly large, but with some cool-looking internal contours.  A couple fallaway greens also (I think).

Hard for me to tell about fairway width -- I suspect they were narrowed some for the event, but not sure.  Most seemed to have reasonable width except for 18 which looked a little unnatural to my eye, with rough to the left of the creek.

I saw some risk/reward tee shots, beginning right at #1 with a large bunker guarding the more favorable right side of the fairway.

Impressive looking course...I get first-hand experience this afternoon  

KC

[Scott_Burroughs]

FWIW, QH isn't even listed in GD's Top 25 in the state for NC.  Not that that means anything.  Only Charlotte-area course on list is Ross' Charlotte CC.  Not enough raters in the area or just none worthy?

Ken,

Couldn't ask for any better weather today.

[Dunlop_White]

The Wachovia Cup was a homerun. It was amazing that nothing was ever mentioned by the players negatively about the tournament all week.  One player, for instance, asked, "Why do we have to play other courses every week when we could play this all the time?" The conditioning was on a level with Augusta! We should have expected nothing less from the organizers at Quail who always run a first class operation.

As for the architecture, Fazio added a tremendous amount of length with additional tees. He also squeezed the landing areas with modified mowing patterns, revised bunker positions, and secondary trees planted inside established corridors of play. "Long and straight" appeared to be the test!

The return routing at Quail encircles a beautiful lake. I'm simply surprised that Fazio did not embrace it as an integral architectural feature.

For instance:

Hole 14, the shortest par 4  on the course, is currently driveable with a draw. But, because of a cluster of trees just left of the tee, players cannot see the green or the lake to the left. If these trees were removed, difficulties would naturally ensue, because golfers instinctively favor the shortest avenue to the hole, often the direct line to the pin. Many golfers simply cannot ignore or avoid the sight line of play. By visually bringing the lake and the green into play from the tee with tree removal, Fazio could have made this an interesting golf hole, the most fascinating of which tends to induce hords of birdies and double bogeys.  

Hole 16: The current tree(s) behind this green serve as a visual form of reference or contanment. Without tree(s), golfers would have a beautiful view of the lake as a backdrop to the flag causing depth perception difficulties in approach.

Hole 17: The original hole sets up much better from the left of 16 green, instead of the right (where they played the tournament). The lake is visually dominating from the left plus the green was actually built to receive shots from this direction.

Hole 18: This is not lake related, but I am surprised that a bunker is presently located to the right of the landing area. While a creek traverses the left side of the hole, a jungle of trees is located just to the right of this bunker. Many, many golfers, including Toms, who bailed out away from the creek, had to negotiate a lateral recovery shot back over the bunker but short of running into the creek. It served as a double hazard! I would either eliminate the bunker or thin out the trees for more agressive recovery play.

[Silver]

I have listened the tv coverage and I really liked to see player having some difficulties with this long and brutal course. But hard to say if it is because it is the first time at QHC for many of them. Also weather seem to be very tough all week long.

I've begun the layout of this course for the game of Links, and if anyone have a recent official scorecard or better like a yardage book, please contact me.
silversound16@hotmail.com

[Tim_Weiman]

Dunlop White:

Thanks for your report. I'm surprised but what you said about #14 and #16 because your suggestions seem in line with what the Fazio organization would normally have done. Maybe there is a story there we haven't heard yet.

[MBL]

Fazio added ...secondary trees planted inside established corridors of play"

Seriously?  I guess as a member, Fazio will be able to look his fellow members in the eye every week to explain why 'secondary' trees would be added....Are they that intent on landing the US Open or PGA that they would "alter established corridors of play"?

Wow.

[Jeff Shelman]

Don't know if anyone has seen this, but this was in the Globe and Mail (that's the New York Times of Canada for those who don't know)....


Nothing goofy about Quail Hollow layout
 

By LORNE RUBENSTEIN
Saturday, May 10, 2003 - Page S4

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CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Here's the primary factor in producing a top-drawer PGA Tour event: Present a strong course with the feel of a major championship venue. The Wachovia Championship in its first year has done this at the Quail Hollow Club here.

"You could have a U.S. Open here tomorrow," Charles Howell III said. "It's definitely the toughest PGA Tour course I've played outside of a major. It's fantastic."

Everybody associated with the tournament, the club and the PGA Tour has to be thrilled with how players have reacted to Quail Hollow. Rarely are players united so positively about anything. The lesson is that as big as the purses are on the PGA Tour, the course does matter.

"It's a straightforward, honest golf course," said Nick Price, who leads the tournament at seven-under par 137. "There's no goofiness to it. There's such a variety out there. There's probably 80-90-100 feet of elevation change on the property. This lends itself to beautiful, rolling holes, downhill shots, uphill shots. There's not a bad hole out there."

Price did feel that a couple of greens looked contrived, but that was his only criticism. Price, a student of course design, worked with Tom Fazio on the new Macarthur Golf Club in Hobe Sound, Fla. He's an authority.

Fazio, as it happens, was hired in 1996 to improve Quail Hollow. Each member at this exclusive private club was assessed $30,000 for the work. They wanted the PGA Tour back at their club. The Kemper Open was held here for a decade, from 1969 to 1979, but the PGA Tour hadn't returned to the Charlotte area since then.

Fazio did quite a job. At 7,300 yards, the course is long enough so that, as Howell said, it will remain impervious to improvements in equipment; narrow fairways and high rough also help. But the updated Quail Hollow has even more going for it.

As Price noted, the topography has made for interesting and challenging holes. The greens have plenty of slope without being crazy with ridges and tiers, as so many hyper-modern courses are, and it's important to be able to work the ball. The golfer who wins tomorrow won't be a one-shot robot; Quail Hollow requires draws and fades, low and high shots.

The closing stretch of holes is tremendous. The 16th is a huge par-four of 478 yards, with a narrow fairway and trees on both sides; it used to be a driver-wedge hole. The entire course, in fact, is tree-lined, although some holes incorporate lakes.

The 17th is a brutal 217-yard par-three with water in front, to the left and behind. David Duval rinsed two balls there in the first round on his way to a score known in statistical categories as an "other," a quadruple-bogey seven.

As for the closing hole, it's about 480 yards. It has bunkers, thick rough, a new creek to the left, and a green with enough knobs and bumps to make anyone queasy. In fact, call this finishing hole 'The Big Queasy.'

The result of such a course is that players will want to return. Word will get out, so it should come as no surprise if Tiger Woods were to show up here, although he didn't enter this year. Ditto, Ernie Els and Phil Mickelson. Rich Beem, who won the 2000 PGA Championship, calls Quail Hollow "awesome."

So are the tournament's perks, which don't hurt its chances of drawing the top players. Each golfer is driving a brand-new Mercedes for the week. Well, each golfer but one. Mercedes policy forbids anybody 21 or younger from getting a loaner from a dealership, so 18-year-old Ty Tryon was Benzless.

But so what? Quail Hollow member Felix Sabates, a National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) team owner, loaned Tryon his black 2002, Rolls-Royce Silver Seraph for the week. The teenage Tryon has been trying it on, shall we say, and he likes it.

It's apparent, then, that everything at this new tournament is first-class. Why, the pros didn't even have to go through the harrowing experience of a six-hour pro-am round on Wednesday as part of a fivesome. They played with only two pro-am partners, in threesomes. Duval called it the "best pro-am experience I've had."

Fantastic, awesome, the best. Any company or city hoping to get a PGA Tour event, or to improve the one it has, should visit this event. It's new, but has already set the standard for every other PGA Tour event. Why, even the media shuttle to the hotel has been operating efficiently.

[Dunlop_White]

Shel,

Thanks for the article. I agree with Lorne one-hundred percent.... This event, in its first year mind you, falls second to none.

Gene Sauers told me that he has never seen anything else quite like it on tour. The amenities, the entertainment, the golf course, the club, the ambience etc., was unbeatable. But I expected only the best as Quail's president is one of the most influencial golf figures in the country, and THE very best entertainer I know. The ingredients adds up! Both the players and the spectators were introduced to southern hospitality at its finest.

Back to the golf course....and as I listed above, I still believe that Team Fazio could have improved many of the final holes. And I did not even get to see the front side.

[JakaB]

Sounds to me like Team Fazio did exacly what they were hired to do...test the pros..not trick weak minded amateurs with open vistas...sorry Dunlop..

[Brian_Marion]

The organizers of the tournament pulled out all the stops for the PGA Tour last week.

Read:

http://www.journalnow.com/wsj/sports/rawlings/MGBV3OHYLFD.html

[Dunlop_White]

Jaka B writes:

Sounds to me like Team Fazio did exacly what they were hired to do...test the pros..not trick weak minded amateurs with open vistas...sorry Dunlop

If the "open vista" of the creek on 18 was enough to get Toms to bail-out into the right woods, what makes you think that the "open vistas" which I suggested would not do the same?? Perhaps Toms is "weak minded" also? Or perhaps, the eyes of the professional golfer see remarkably like the eyes of the amateur?
Sorry Jaka B, but challenging golfers visually is a classical architectural facet. If implementing visual challenges is a "trick", then it is among the oldest "tricks" in the book, and it works for amateurs and pros alike.

Ross spoke in detail about architecture providing a visual test. He often used offset tee boxes, which are not aligned with the center of the fairway, to distort the angles of play through misdirection.  A careful look at his routing plans would also reveal that Ross faced many of his tee boxes away from the direction of play. Consequently, golfers must possess a keen sense of visual alignment or risk losing their bearing.

Max Behr wrote about tempting golfers visually with the line-of-instinct: by providing a direct site-line to the hole when a lateral, more indirect route was preferable. Hole 14 at Quail could produce this same visual temptation, just like Hole 10 at the Belfry. Professionals fall prey to visual temptations too.

Mackenzie wrote about camouflage. Flynn and Thomas wrote about visually accentuating undesirable course locations. Tillinghast wrote about depth perception difficulties with tree removal.
Granted if the ball is 186 yards from the hole, chances are the professional will be able to pull off that 186 yard shot. However, if that very same shot, without the visual dimension that a framework of trees provides, actually looks 196 yards.....that is enough doubt and uncertainty needed to alter the swing .....especially for the professionals, who are not provoked to think and make mental decisions often enough on today's Tour venues.
Fazio had the tools to create many visual challenges at Quail. Either he chose not to, was not allowed to, or he failed to recognize that they existed!

Dunlop

[Ken_Cotner]

Some quick comments after playing the course yesterday.  Holes in same locations as Sunday, but our tees were 1,000 (that's one thousand!) yards shorter at 6,300. Would have liked to play the next set back (6,700 yards) -- I had 11 short iron approaches and I am a short hitter.

Terrific variety.  Short holes, long holes, up, down, sideways, all wind directions.  Plenty of options.

Nice comfortable routing with no long walks between holes.

Really fun greens.  LOTS of character and plenty of challenge.  Hole locations were devilish for the most part (I had 40 putts -- couldn't have been a lack of talent).  Speed was reasonable given the contours.

Fairway widths were OK, but appeared to have been narrowed for the tournament.  Many fairway bunkers were inside the rough.  I don't know if Fazio planted trees, but the course was not claustrophobic at all.  A couple holes had fun single trees to work around.

It was strange playing on rye grass in the south.  Rough was up and a bear for us mortals.

Funnest shot -- drive on 14 (301 yards from our tee, downhill, cross wind, with water left and long) onto the front fringe.  Had a 52 yard (yards, not feet) putt.  Hole was two steps from the back edge and water.  Routine 5.

Best sign -- "Slower players will let faster players play through regardless of the size of the group".  I understand this club takes fast play VERY seriously.

Really a fun course, one of the best I've played, can't wait to try it again.

KC

[Jeff Shelman]

I walked around the course on Thursday and Friday following a local tour rookie who I have been writing about and I thought the golf course was fantastic for a number of reasons.

1. This was not a golf course that was overpowered by technology. It's about 7400 yards with a half dozen par 4s of more than 450. In addition the course required players to both get the ball in play (rough was close to 5"), but they also had to put it in the correct spots on the green. Too often courses require one, but not the other.

2. The routing and pace of the layout was very good. There were no long walks, but the course didn't get boring either. Holes played into a variety of directions and there was significant elevation changes.

3 The players seemed to really like the golf course to a man they talked about how Quail Hollow was a legit US Open-type venue.