Two of the main storylines of the 2022 PGA Championship were the weather and the revamped architecture of the Southern Hills Country Club. Players and spectators got a taste of every season in Tulsa, from the expected heat and humidity to gusty winds and cool temperatures dipping into the 1950s. Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner’s course restoration in 2018, meanwhile, changed the complexion of the tree-lined Southern Hills face and brought back the multidimensionality of the old Perry Maxwell-designed resort greens that for decades had been blanketed in thick Bermuda rough.

Fast forward 12 months to the 2023 PGA Championship and these themes will be relevant again when the PGA of America visits Oak Hill Country Club in Rochester, NY. wild are possible in upstate New York in mid-May. And like Southern Hills, Oak Hill’s historic East Course, host to three previous US Opens and three PGA Championships, as well as a Ryder Cup and two US Amateurs, has undergone a major renovation that will leave viewers wondering. ask what happened to the old tree cloister. Oak Hill they knew.

Here’s a first look at the venue for the 2023 PGA Championship.

It was 2015 when the club was named host of the 2023 PGA, and it was expected at the time to take place in the major’s traditional August on the golf calendar. But in 2018, the PGA Championship moved to May, with Oak Hill among the previously named venues which likely worried PGA of America officials understanding that a particularly harsh or prolonged winter could hamper course preparations with the date pushed back. .

While visiting Oak Hill during PGA Championship week in Southern Hills, the weather was unsettled. It rained early in the week and Tuesday morning temperatures were in the 40s with high winds between 20 and 30 mph. This is not uncommon, nor particularly serious. The caddies wore gloves and beanies, but at least there was no snow – locals know that’s a possibility, even in May.

By the end of the day and the next morning, however, the sun had come out and the winds had died down. A good bet is that the morning rounds will be cold and fast, and which side of the draw players end up on could be a factor (sound familiar?). Course conditions will also be more benign for scoring – fall fescue roughs aren’t as hearty, curved greens won’t be as racy as they would be during the summer. Even the appearance of the course will be different as the hardwoods – oaks, maples, elms and cherry trees – were only just beginning to flower and produce foliage.

The good news is that the northern latitude allows for more daylight, so rounds can go further into the evening if the game is slow.

When Jason Dufner won there at the 2013 PGA, the last time most of us saw the course, Oak Hill was the parks’ premier championship course with small, sloping greens and narrow, tree-shaded fairways. deciduous and pine forests. The course had become so overgrown with mature trees that tee shots landing in the fairways sometimes had no clear lines into the greens.

The club began an aggressive tree removal program in the mid-2010s which has continued through the recent refurbishment of Andrew Green and remains an ongoing project. Removing dozens of specimens that gave Oak Hill its name and reputation gives the course more springiness, healthier turf and better sight lines, at least if one appreciates the visibility of horizons, areas targets and other architectural elements.

It also produced a stunning transformation of the landscape, even more extreme (and necessary) than Southern Hills. This allowed for a significant expansion of the fairway – not to the original Donald Ross dimensions of the 1920s, but far beyond the recent 25-metre-wide airstrips of yesteryear. To a greater degree than at any time during the Oak Hill tournament, players will be able to attack holes from the tee and driving distances should be similar to what they were at Southern Hills.

The shrinking of Oak Hill’s greens over the decades due to mowing patterns and sand spattering from bunkers had drastically reduced the number of hole locations available. The bunkers had also lost their identity – many were added by Robert Trent Jones, who mixed up the dangers during a renovation in the 1950s and most had taken on modern rounded shapes indistinguishable from hundreds of other courses.

Green’s remodel is not a faithful restoration. He did not attempt to reconstruct exactly or in the exact places what Ross had traced on the plans and on the ground. But Green has captured the spirit of an older way of shaping bunkers with more intricate edging, level bunker floors and vertical grass faces, as well as emulating early golf technique. consisting in placing the bunkers in the embankments and the ascending slopes.

The result is a more severe-looking East course with strong upper horizontal lines and striking shadow contrast. Most bunkers have low entry points and steep back faces, and the chances of recovery will depend on where the ball comes to rest in the sand. This is especially true for fairway bunkers, which can result in a half-stroke to full-stroke penalty if the ball settles near a face.

Significant work has been carried out on the greens. Each was rebuilt and redesigned to recover corners and edges that had receded or become too steep due to sand buildup. Most putting surfaces are enlarged and structured in square formations with the occasional extended lobe for precision hole placements. This will allow tournament officials to move the pins to the perimeters. In most cases, the greens are not extremely contoured, so green speeds can be maximized (or at least as high as the crew can get them in May), producing mostly long, flat putts, for example. opposition to putts that break and dip.

Oak Hill has a compelling mix of short par 4s like 12 and 14, both potentially driveable depending on where the PGA of America places the tees, and long, strenuous two-shot holes, especially the numbers. 6-9 and 17 and 18. Two of the four par 3s will play between 230 and 250 yards to well-protected targets. But expect the score to be closely tied to the weather – a cold spring week in the upstate will keep the normal numbers relevant, but if it’s reasonably warm and calm the course will give way to a game. aggressive.

ROCHESTER, N.Y., 7,360 yards, BY 70

DESIGNERS: Donald Ross (1925), with modifications by Robert Trent Jones (1955); George and Tom Fazio (1976); and Craig Schreiner (1993-1995).
MAJOR RENOVATION: Andre Green (2019)