HOW TO PLAY SOUTHERN HILLS
The iconic 18th hole at Southern Hills Country Club in Tulsa.
Ready to take on all comers by ken macleod
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hen Tiger Woods conquered the field in the 2007 PGA Championship at 8-under-par at Southern Hills, he mostly navigated the rolling, twisting Perry Maxwell gem with limited use of his driver, preferring to hit stinging fairway woods and long irons off the tees. It was blisteringly hot, the ball was carrying forever and the muscular 2007 Tiger was one of the longest hitters in golf. He didn’t need driver to position himself for proper apGil Hanse proaches. Average driving distance on the PGA Tour has increased since 2007 from 289.08 to 295.3 in 2021 with many players often able to carry it 330 yards or more in the air. What does that do to a venerable course like Southern Hills? Particularly in May without the defense of a thick Bermuda rough? Well, this is not your dad’s Southern 20
Hills, or even your older brother’s. A restoration by Gil Hanse has added considerable fire to the green surrounds and new tee boxes have pushed the total distance on the par-70 course to 7,556 yards, considerably longer than the 7,131 it played in 2007. In all of his restorations of major championship venues, Hanse, Jim Wagner and his team face the same questions: Where
Kerry Haigh
Russ Myers
to position bunkers to challenge the world’s best and longest while also making sense for daily member play from various tee boxes. “A lot of the attention goes to the few outliers who can really bomb it, but until they do something about distance we just have to react to where they are right now,” Hanse said. “We were more
GOLF OKL AHOMA • 2022 PGA CHAMPIONSHIP PREVIEW
focused on restoring the course and the intent of Perry Maxwell. If we find a situation where we can challenge the longest hitters while embracing Maxwell’s design, that’s fine. “But the challenge is not going to be bunker carries, it’s in the greens. And they don’t even have to be fast. It’s firmness that matters. Hopefully the weather will cooperate and (superintendent Russ Myers) has all the infrastructure to create a firm, fast challenge.” That infrastructure includes hydronic tubing beneath every green for temperature control, not that it should come Cary Cozby into play that much in May. Hanse made the greens effectively smaller with grading and restored runoffs in areas that had become backstops. The members got a full dose in the 2019 club championship, where the average score was five shots higher than it had been in 2017, the last year before the restoration. Handicaps have taken a beating and many W W W.GOLFOKL AHOMA.ORG
