Feelings on PGA Frisco

In the modern era of golf design, there have been very few attempts to build a golf course with major championships in mind. Since TPC Sawgrass the list is relatively sparse with Erin Hills, Chambers Bay, and last week’s KPMG Women’s PGA Championship host, Fields Ranch East at Omni PGA Frisco.

The Gil Hanse design coupled with Kerry Haigh’s setup caught many bullets this week. Angel Yin called the course “quite boring.” World No. 1 Nelly Korda said some of the hole locations were “almost impossible.” KPMG Ambassador Stacy Lewis suggested the job of the major championship setup team was to “make us look good” and that the course was “making very good players look silly.” On the telecast, Lead Analyst Morgan Pressel criticized the course for not “rewarding good shots.” After missing the cut, Sophia Popov shared her thoughts on Instagram: “The @pga managed to set the golf course up to make us look silly and incapable the majority of the time out there.” 

Through all the complaints, some players praised the setup. “It was hard but was super fun,” said eventual winner Minjee Lee. “It's brutal but it's fun,” echoed Ruoning Yin. Leona Maguire added, “You just have to be very disciplined and execute your shots, which I don't have a problem with in a major championship.”

Coupling the challenging setup with 30 mph winds, the never-swift pace of play of the LPGA spiked to six-plus hour rounds and caused issues for the television window. To mitigate the TV problem, officials opted for threesomes and split tees for the final round, which isn’t ideal for a major championship Sunday.

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The embattled Fields Ranch East is two major championships into its run of hosting another Women’s PGA in 2031, the men’s PGA Championship in 2027 and 2034, and a Senior PGA Championship in 2029. Some may have issues with the course’s design and setup, but the venue’s visual presentation on TV and spectator experience are more warranted concerns. 

The course was Hanse’s attempt to build a modern major championship test, a tall task given the distance modern men hit the golf ball. Frisco’s bunkers are deep and well placed, but the chief defense comes in the way of red hazard lines from the ravines and creeks that work their way through the center of the property. Hanse used these penalty hazards very effectively, orienting eight of the 10 greens where red lines come into play towards the hazard line. What he’s asking is simple: play close to the red line and get the best angle. Where there aren’t hazard lines, he employs deep bunkers to similarly guard the line of charm.  Along with the strategic nature off the tee, Hanse created a course that accepts shots that run into the green, as 12 of the 18 greens feature an open approach for a running shot from the proper angle. 

With extremely firm conditions and heavy winds, the strategic values Hanse used in his design were amplified at the Women’s PGA. The conditions led to a few issues in the setup, notably the eighth hole, a downwind par 3 that was almost unhittable early in the week. But the overarching issue was the lack of design awareness from the players, caddies, and pundits. The announcing crew, notably Pressel, made no attempt to explain when a player was in an ideal position to attack or when they were out of position and needed to play conservatively. At PGA Frisco, the fairways are very wide, but that doesn’t guarantee a great place to approach the green. With the conditions ramped up, it created very narrow areas where players could freely approach the greens, and those in the incorrect positions paid the price.

The more I watched the coverage this weekend, the less valid I found the complaints from players and analysts to be. Shots from poor positions were often not able to hold a green, and those shots were deemed unfair. Golf Channel’s pregame show on Sunday discussed this topic, specifically the 18th hole (normally the ninth). The par 4 features a centerline bunker and a fairway that gets cut off by a ravine. The hole, which had been playing downwind, put the world’s best women in a blender. Players chose to either fly the bunker and then run into the rough short of the ravine or lay back and leave a lengthy approach into a green surrounded by bunkers. In either case, they were unable to hold the green. The point of the hole is to give players the option to play left of the bunker along the hazard line for the easiest approach. A tee shot that takes on the narrow left fairway can earn an approach from a flat lie and a perfect angle to approach the well-protected green.

During the Golf Channel segment, they highlighted an approach shot by Lexi Thompson, who flew her tee over the bunker on the 18th and found the rough on the downslope short of the ravine. Here, the phrase “good shots not being rewarded” was used, as Thompson hit a short club from the rough with a heavy wind behind her to the front of the green. The ball, as it often does from Bermuda rough, released and rolled over the back. Did Lexi make clean contact and give it a good chance to hold the green? Sure. But she was in such a bad position that she should never have attempted that shot. Instead, she should have opted to play it safe left and short of the green and used her short game to walk away with a par after a misplayed tee shot.

Do I love everything about PGA Frisco? Hardly. Do I think the setup was perfect this week? No, but I do think it’s a course that can produce interesting major championships. Much of the angst was from a lack of understanding of the question that Gil Hanse and his team were asking with their design.

Using penalty hazards is probably the only way to create a strategy to test modern tour pros who use analytics and course strategy systems that tell them to aim away from penalties at all costs. At PGA Frisco, Hanse hammers that strategy over and over with delayed penalties in the form of really poor angles and greens that slope away from those angles. When the wind is up and the greens are firm, the course is a wonderful departure from the monotonous Google Earth-driven strategy that has infiltrated modern golf.

‍This piece originally appeared in the Fried Egg Golf newsletter. Subscribe for free and receive golf news and insight every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.