ATLANTA – The Tour Championship returns to East Lake for the 24th time. Xander Schauffele is not alone in feeling as though he is on a brand new course.
East Lake went through an extensive renovation by architect Andrew Green, who most notably refurbished Oak Hill for the PGA Championship last year, and the changes are stark.
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“This is not the same golf course,” Scottie Scheffler said while playing the front nine when he arrived Monday.
Schauffele was more direct, and perhaps the most skeptical. No one has played East Lake better over the last decade. He has never been over par in seven years, with a scoring average just under 67,
“It's got the same name — it's East Lake Golf Club. It's in the same property, similar square footage. But that's about it,” Schauffele said Tuesday.
Green's work was completed in a year, and Schauffele wondered if the Tour Championship might move elsewhere to give the sod a chance to grow, particularly the greens.
Green used 1949 aerials of East Lake in restoring the course that dates to 1904. Every tee, fairway, green and bunker was rebuilt. The bunkers around the 18th green are deep. The bunker left of the peninsula green on the par-3 15th has been removed. The eighth hole has been shortened. The 14th hole has been lengthen and now plays as a par 5. It's a lot.
“The bunkers are new, the grasses are new in the fairways, the greens are new, the grass on the greens are new, the runouts are different, the slopes are different. I think the only thing that’s the same are the directions of the hole,” Schauffele said.
“Whatever record I had is the past. I have no memory or anything really on any hole to go off of, not even a tree I could aim at that I used to aim at. It’s just that different.”
And so much is at stake. The Tour Championship is for the leading 30 players in the FedEx Cup, with the winner getting $25 million.
Schauffele has had the low score twice and matched the low score once, and he only has one trophy to show for it. That was in 2017, when he won the Tour Championship and Justin Thomas won the FedEx Cup from having more points.
Schauffele was asked if any part of him would have thrown himself in front of the bulldozer.
“One hundred percent, yeah,” he said. “My caddie, as well. He probably would have gone first.”
The format has changed to have a staggered start — Scheffler as the No. 1 seed will be 10-under par, two ahead of Schauffele when the FedEx Cup finale starts Thursday. Schauffele had the low score by three shots in 2020 ( Dustin Johnson was the top seed and won ) and he tied top-seeded Viktor Hovland last year.
That was tough to take. Losing the same course where he had so much success? That requires a little more time.
“It's just a new golf course,” Schauffele said. “Kind of a glass half-full guy, so I’ve played a lot of new courses this year that I’ve done okay at. And this is a brand new property.”
There might be some brand new strategies.
Scheffler and Schauffele were among those who contemplated hitting drives left of the par-5 18th onto the 10th fairway. The angle is better to the green, and the reshaped 18th fairway is severe enough that it's canters to the right and creates problems.
“It seems like a safer play to take all that out of play, hit it down 10,” he said. “The green is going to be pretty extraordinarily hard to hold anyways with it being a downslope and having a long club in there. It’s more you’re playing for birdies. There is less opportunity I think for eagle than there was before.”
The greens are firm enough that tour officials do not plan to use a back tee on the par-3 15th, played entirely over water with a longer club, because the green will be too hard to hold.
But they're all playing the same course for a lot of money. And no one is entirely sure how it will play out until the scores count on Thursday.
“As soon as I walked on the property, I was kind of shocked,” Hovland said. "It looks nothing like it used to. Seems like he’s basically changed every single hole out there. It was just kind of wild how much you can actually change the holes with not really moving holes around. It’s all kind of in the same place, but yet none of the holes look exactly the same.
“I could probably try to describe a person that’s never been here before what it used to look like, and it’s almost like you can’t imagine it,” he said. “It’ll be interesting to kind of get used to it, that’s for sure.”
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AP golf: https://apnews.com/hub/golf