Kiawah Showing its Teeth at PGA Championship

The Ocean Course at Kiawah, the site of this years PGA Championship, is showing its teeth early. That’s a good thing. It means this PGA Championship may be one of the most entertaining and memorable in recent years.

Honestly, when is the last time you saw Pros have to lay up on a par 5? Isn’t that refreshing? Or hit a wood into a par 3? Justin Thomas just hit a 5 wood into #17. It’s playing 214 yards on Thursday with a 20 mph wind into the players faces.

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This is the type of Major golf I’m here for.

I don’t want to see the guys get beat up all day. But it is fun to see the best players in the world wrestle with carries, layups, horrible lies in the rough, and swirling winds.

In many ways it makes this PGA Championship at Kiawah feel like a US Open.

What mid- and high-handicappers should takeaway is this; golf is really hard. It’s not just you.

Every week we see Tour players hitting driver-wedge into almost every par 4. We see them hit mid-irons into 210 yard par 3s. And there are virtually no par 5s that aren’t comfortably reachable in two shots.

For the vast majority of the golfing world, these things sound outrageous.

But this week at Kiawah, the pros get to see the game like the rest of us. Hitting hybrids and woods on long par 3s, being unable to reach par 5s in two, and experiencing par 4s where bogey sometimes feels like an acceptable score.

That stuff sounds pretty familiar to most of us, doesn’t it?

I’ll admit to a healthy dose of schadenfreude coursing through my veins today. I certainly don’t wish bad golf on anyone, but it’s nice to watch the Pros encounter a course through the same lens I see every 18 I play.

Put another way, if you are a player who routinely scrambles for a half-decent look at a par putt, this week at Kiawah will look familiar.

The Ocean course is tipping out at over 7,800 yards this week. That’s probably about 1,600 yards longer than the regular Men’s tees you might play at your local course. In other words, it’s like adding an extra four par 4 holes without giving you any extra stroke allotments.

That kind of yardage, coupled with 20mph winds, makes for some entertaining golf.

After seeing shots go into the water, careen into the deepest of rough, watching players putt and chip off the green, and a host of other delightful shots most of us commonly hit, this week at Kiawah should make you feel better about your game.

Golf is hard, even for the best in the world, when course conditions outstrip the talent of the player. For most of us, that’s the case every time we tee it up. It’s rare to see it happen to the Pros, but it’s also wildly and addictively entertaining.

Kiawah is already famous for being the site of the best Ryder Cup ever contested. After this week, it might add Best PGA Championship to its resume.