'Brand New' East Lake Golf Club could leave stars bewildered

When a golf course is brand new, or when it’s been renovated, the greens are often so rock hard that it’s impossible to stop a ball on the surface. Apparently, that’s the condition at East Lake Golf Club after the recent renovation.

“It's firm. It's fast. Needs to settle in,” Xander Schauffele said in his pre-tournament interview. “I'm not huge in agronomy, but I've played some new courses before, and they're a little bouncy. However it was designed to be played, it's going to be a little bit different for the first two years just because it hasn't settled in.”

He went so far as to suggest that maybe the Tour Championship should have gone elsewhere for a couple of years to let the course normalize.

Unfortunately, for Schauffele, he is wrapping up his best year ever, and now faces a course that he used to play better than almost anyone. That course is gone. His advantage is wiped away. But while he may be disappointed in that, he didn’t say so. He’s not a quitter.

“I've played a lot of new courses this year that I've done okay at, and this is a brand new property,” he explained. “The only thing that's the same are the directions of the hole.”

Xander Schauffele said East Lake had the same name and the same acreage, but that’s it. 

Several golfers, including Viktor Hovland, indicated that on some holes, the second shots or shots to the green are now made with a longer club. That can make it harder to stop the ball.

“It's a big advantage to come into the greens with a club that's spinning versus bouncing around,” he insisted.

The rough, he noted, makes a shot from there to the green nearly impossible to stop on the putting surface.

“I don't think anyone on this property can hold a green hitting a lob wedge or sand wedge out of the rough into the green,” he said. “You need to be in the fairway to do some damage out here.”

Scottie Scheffler agreed that East Lake bears little resemblance to what was here previously. 

“It's basically a new golf course from what it was before. It's not really at all the same. The greens, since they're new, are extremely firm, which I think makes it more challenging,” he said. 

Scheffler said that before, the greens sloped back to front and they were hitting into the grain, which helps to slow down the golf ball. Unless a golfer had a long club, he didn’t expect much bounce. 

“Now they're extremely firm, especially the par-3s,” Scheffler explained. “The par-3s, I think, provide the most challenge because the run-ups to the short of the greens are still fairly soft, and so if you land it short it's probably not going to be bouncing up, and if you land it on the green it kind of just hits and goes.”

As far as the clubs into the greens, on the par 3s, Scheffler said he will hit slightly longer clubs. As far as the 14th hole is concerned, it has gone back to being a par 5, which Scheffler likes.  He called it a fun hole. But based on some comments, fun might be the last word most golfers would use to describe the course this week.

“With Bermuda rough, anytime you see somebody in the rough, it's going to be extremely challenging for them to be able to land the ball on the green and hold the green almost no matter what club they're hitting,” Scheffler explained. “Even the wedges at times I think are going to be challenging to hold the greens.”

To counter the renovation and newness, Scottie Scheffler, and likely others, played their tee shots on the 18th into the 10th fairway.

“I'll describe it this way: If you hit it into the right rough, you're now hitting it over a pond to a fairway that's pretty narrow,” Scheffler began. “If you hit it in the left rough you probably can't hold the green from there, and if you don't get it to the fairway, you're going to be in the water. It seems like a safer play to take all that out of play, hit it down 10.”

If you are a betting person, that kind of information might be important.

One way or another, East Lake isn’t going to be “the same” for a while. Look for higher scores, look for more swearing into golf shirts and hats. Look for more frustration. And just know that if something looked like a bad shot, it might not have been.   

However, even with the changes, nobody said they weren’t teeing it up on Thursday. There’s too much at stake.