Why Mudballs Are Dominating the Conversation at Quail Hollow

If you’ve consumed any early coverage of the 2025 PGA Championship, you’ve heard the term “mudball” once or twice or 500 times too many already. If you know what a mudball is, you’re probably annoyed even reading the word. If not, here’s a quick explainer.

Why Are They Such a Big Deal?

Mudballs add a level of variance that is nearly impossible to predict. The mud covers dimples, adds weight to one side or half of the ball, and can greatly impact solid, center-face contact when a course has taken on a significant amount of rain, like we’ve seen at Quail Hollow this week. Golf balls and equipment are carefully designed to perform their best under very specific, repeatable conditions. When something throws those conditions off, things can go awry. These players obsess over every minute detail, so when something like a mudball takes away predictability and alevel of comfort, they’re unhappy. 

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“You spend your whole life trying to learn how to control a golf ball, and due to a rules decision all of a sudden you have absolutely no control over where that golf ball goes,” said world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler. 

Typically, the PGA Tour is quick to implement the preferred lies ruling, which allows a player to lift, clean, and place their ball as long as it’s in the fairway. But, with hopes of upholding the “integrity” of their major, the PGA of America decided against such a ruling for Thursday.

How Do You Play a Mudball?

Over the years, we’ve discovered some general rules that tend to apply. "Mud left, ball right," Trevor Immelman explained to Golf Digest. "Mud on top, ball goes lower."

“I don't know, maybe hit it a little bit lower off the tee, but then unfortunately the problem with hitting it low off the tee is the ball doesn't carry or roll anywhere, so then you sacrifice distance,” said Xander Schauffele. “It’s a bit of a crapshoot.”

It’s impossible for a player to figure out the weight of the mud on the ball, meaning some shots might go 40 yards offline, and some might go 10. Scheffler and Schauffele fell victim to these unknowns on No. 16 at Quail Hollow in Thursday’s first round, and both made double bogey after rinsing their approaches from the fairway. 

“We were in the middle of the fairway, and I don’t know, we had to aim right of the grandstands probably,” Schauffele noted. “I’m not sure, I aimed right of the bunker and it whipped in the water and Scottie whipped it in the water, as well.”

More Mudballs to Come at Quail

The mudballs have already been a nuisance at Quail Hollow, and Schauffele thinks they’ll get even worse.

“They're going to get worse as the place dries up,” he explained. “They're going to get in that perfect cake zone to where it's kind of muddy underneath and then picking up mud on the way through.”

I’m not sure the PGA of America was hoping for mudballs (and whatever the “perfect cake zone” is) to be the main subject of conversation after round one, but, as has become the theme, weird things happen at the PGA Championship.