I've long thought Valhalla was a very interesting driving course for the average player, as the angled landing areas give wide aiming cones from the tee with decisions to be made on many holes. I didn't necessarily expect this to apply to the pros, but from the ground on Thursday, it was clear that players were taking very different lines off certain tees. 7 is an obvious example, but there were many others. On 1, about half the players went straight off the tee and ended up around 150-160 yards out on the right side of the fairway. Other players challenged the grove of trees left and cut the dogleg to leave a shorter approach from a more advantageous angle, with poorly struck drives getting tangled in the pines. Challenging the inside bunker on 5 gives a similar benefit.
Watching this, it struck me that perhaps Valhalla promises more "reward" when it presents risk/reward scenarios than other courses. Cutting doglegs doesn't just give a shorter approach, but in many cases also gives a better angle. It's not a course that lends itself to conservatively plotting around. Instead, players really need to take a bit of risk to avoid constantly being stuck with long approaches from awkward angles. As a result, players can get hot quickly and make a run, but will still get burned a few times in a round. We saw it with Rory at 10 and 11 on Thursday, and at 2 on Friday, and we've seen it with other players throughout the tournament. It leads to a nice ebb and flow of players making runs and then falling back.