Lightning-fast greens strike fear in PGA field
Quail Hollow bares its teeth in major first-round test
Jordan Spieth began his quest for the career Grand Slam by not making a putt longer than five feet. What helped was that Quail Hollow punished just about everyone at some point Thursday in the PGA Championship.
Kevin Kisner and Thorbjorn Olesen of Denmark emerged as the top survivors on a course with some of the fastest, scariest putting surfaces the PGA Championship has ever seen. And both had to watch lengthy birdie putts creep into the cup on the 18th hole to share the lead at 4-under following rounds of 67.
For all the talk about this 7,600yard course favouring the big hitters, the shortest club in the bag was just as valuable.
“Any time you have a putt downgrain, downhill ... we just tap it and hope it stops by the hole,” Jon Rahm said after a 70.
Spieth is among the best putters in golf, especially from long range. On consecutive holes, he ran long putts some 10 feet by the cup and made bogey. He saved his round with two late birdies for a 1-over 72 and was just five shots behind.
The 24-year-old Texan would become the sixth, and youngest, player to complete the Grand Slam if he were to win the PGA Championship.
U.S. Open champion Brooks Koepka was among five players at 68. Koepka missed a half-dozen putts from 12 feet or closer, and while it looked as though he hit the ball well enough to go low at Quail Hollow, he wasn’t the least bit frustrated.
“It’s going to test your patience one way or another,” Koepka said. “That’s just a major. You’ve got to stay patient. You can’t make doubles out here. That’s the big thing. Make sure the worst score you make is a bogey and give yourself a couple of good chances on the easier holes.”
That’s the way Kisner approached it.
It helps that he grew up in the South and loves Bermuda greens. Given the size of Quail Hollow, Kisner drew up a simple plan. He identified four or five holes where he could make birdie, and he played for par everywhere else.
“I birdied them all today,” Kisner said. “Make a lot of pars, and get to a par-5 or one of those short par4s, I can do my wedge game and get it to 10 or 12 feet. That’s my plan. Other than that, I’m playing for par.”
The 18th was not one of the birdie holes he had in mind, especially with his ball nestled in the Bermuda rough 205 yards from the pin. Kisner thought the grass was thin enough behind the ball to get a 5-iron on it, and from there it was a matter of judging how much it would bounce. It ran up to the green about 20 feet away, and he used that rhythmic putting stroke to trickle it into the cup.
Olesen picked up birdies on most of the same holes, and he finished with a 30-foot birdie that also sounded like an accident.
“It was a little bit of a safe shot into the green,” he said. “That’s what can happen on this golf course. When you play safe into the greens, you give yourself very tricky putts, like the one I had — downhill, left-toright. It was very, very fast. But it was just a very good roll. So it was nice to see that one drop.”
Rory McIlroy, the betting favourite coming into the week because of his two victories at Quail Hollow, was motoring along just fine when he birdied the 10th hole to reach 2-under, just two shots behind. One swing changed everything. He hooked his tee shot into the water on the reachable par-4 14th, had to drop in nasty rough and missed a short putt to make double bogey. He failed to birdie the par-5 15th and closed with three pars for a 72.
Hideki Matsuyama, Dustin Johnson and Jason Day were among those at 1-under 70, a group that also included Graham DeLaet of Weyburn, Sask. The other two Canadians in the field were far off the pace — Mackenzie Hughes of Dundas, Ont., posted a 7-over 78, while Adam Hadwin of Abbotsford, B.C. carded an 8-over 79.
Make sure the worst score you make is a bogey and give yourself a couple of good chances on the easier holes.