Unsettling scores
Is TPC River Highlands too easy? McIlroy thinks so
CROMWELL — If one were to speak against the grain of sanity by suggesting that golf is an easy sport, they’d at least have the Travelers Championship leaderboard to submit as part of an argument.
Golf is ridiculously difficult, of course. It’s just considerably more manageable for PGA Tour players at TPC River Highlands, where Denny McCarthy opened this year’s Travelers with a 10under par 60 in the first round and winner Keegan Bradley finished with a tournament-record total score of 23-under.
“You’re watching the best players in the world play against each other with the hand they were dealt,” Travelers Championship tournament director Nathan Grube said. “They were dealt softer greens because of the weather, and a guy they had to go after. I don’t mind the scores. What I find fascinating is how guys are taking advantage of the golf course and how what one guy does will cause the other guys to play very differently to try to catch him. Greens get soft, someone goes low, guys hit the gas.”
Players floored it this week, with just 37 in a field of 156 (153 after withdrawals) failing to break par. Eighteen players finished 15-under or better. Bradley won with a four-round scorecard of 62-63-64-68. The previous record in the 72-year-old tournament was 22-under par by Kenny Perry in 2009. Bradley even flirted with the best relation-to-par score in PGA Tour history, which remains Justin Thomas’ 27-under at the 2017 Sony Invitation.
And this wasn’t a runaway. While Bradley won comfortably — by three strokes, despite some Sunday back-nine hiccups — this was hardly, for instance, Tiger Woods tearing up Pebble Beach to win the U.S. Open by 15 strokes in 2000. This was
the best players in the world picking apart one of professional golf’s shortest courses from Thursday morning to Sunday afternoon, with the tournament up for grabs all along.
But a question worth asking is whether the 6,852-yard, par-70 River Highlands is enough of a challenge. Is placing Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler on these tees akin to having Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani play home run derby on a Little League diamond?
“I don’t particularly like when a tournament is like this,” said McIlroy, the world No. 3 who finished 18-under and tied for seventh. “Unfortunately, technology has passed this course by. It sort of has made it obsolete, especially as soft as it has been with a little bit of rain that we had.”
Obsolete? What’s the difference? Players hit from the same tees and putt into the same holes 72 times and one person does it better than the rest to wind up with a trophy and a massive paycheck ($3.6 million this year). Would it be better if the golf course was the winner, so to speak? Should shooting even-par be a grind?
In short, is it good, bad or neither for the winning total of a tour event to 23under par? These are legitimate questions. There are no right or wrong answers.
“I don’t honestly care,” Grube said while Bradley was starting to struggle, just a tiny bit, on the back nine Sunday. “The best players in the world are here. There was some rain. The greens got wet. We knew the guys were going to be aggressive. Especially when a guy sets a pace like that, it’s awesome to see they guys play so aggressively trying to catch him. What one guy does will cause the other guys to play differently. So, do I like it? It depends.”
There were 44 eagles this week, 1,844 birdies, 4,969 pars, 994 bogeys, 88 double-bogeys and 17 “other” scores. The birdies are the most in Travelers history, and the third most in a PGA Tour event this season. That might signal that the golf — but not necessarily the competition — in Cromwell is easier.
“That might even be harder, to be honest, knowing that there are a lot of birdies,” Xander Schauffele, the 2021 champion, said Sunday. “You have high expectations when come to a place and you look up at the board and you’re expecting a 60 or 63 to show up. A lot of good things need to happen for that to go your way. You need to be sharp, making putts, reading putts correctly, making the right decisions, reading the wind correctly, all kinds of stuff. You can’t just walk your way — for myself, at least — into ten birdies in a round. I’m trying pretty hard when that happens.”
Travelers scores are always low and, of course, the best single-round score in PGA Tour history was posted at River Highlands in 2016, the 58 by Jim Furyk. The course is relatively forgiving, even if there is a high risk-reward factor on the back nine, particularly on the 15-16-17 “triangle” holes that surround the pond.
The conditions are set by the PGA Tour, which controls everything inside the ropes for the week — including fairway speed, green speed, rough length. After each event, rules officials submit reports to the tour that can include suggestions.
Any modifications to the course, overall, would have to be considered and discussed between the tournament’s competition committee and the leadership at TPC River Highlands. The course can’t get longer and there’s nothing, or anybody, suggesting that any type of overhaul is in the works or even necessary.
McIlory, who has finished between T-7 and T-19 every time he’s played the Travelers, would prefer a higher degree of difficulty.
“You can grow the rough up and hope you get some firm conditions so it gets tricky,” McIlroy said. “I think the blueprint for a really good golf course isn’t growing the rough up and making the fairways tight. That bunches everyone together. The blueprint is something like [Los Angeles Country Club] where you have wide targets, but if you miss it’s penal. This isn’t that sort of golf course. It’s not that sort of layout. It doesn’t have the land to do that. So, you know, unfortunately when you get soft conditions like this and you’ve got the best players in the world, this is what’s going to happen.”
The winning Travelers score hasn’t been worse than 10-under par since 1993, when Nick Price shot 9-under. Schauffele won at 19-under last season, Harris English at 13-under in 2021 (after an eight-hole playoff ) and Dustin Johnson at 19-under in 2020.
Don’t like it? You’re in the McIlroy camp? The U.S. Open, which always precedes the Travelers, offers something so different that it often looks like another sport for the unforgiving way courses are set up by the USGA. Wyndham Clark won the Open last week at Los Angeles Country Club at 10under. The previous three winners finished at 6-under, including Jon Rahm in 2021.
“You’re obviously battling the rest of the field, but you’re also battling the golf course and yourself,” Rahm said on Tuesday, speaking in general about playing courses where the winning score is closer to par. “When you go to Kapalua you know you need to shoot 25-under to have a chance. It’s not a fight against the golf course. It’s not as intense. If I were ever to go to a tournament and win with over-par score, I feel like that would be a really satisfying week. Doesn’t happen often anymore, but I feel like that would be a really satisfying win.”
Rahm, this year’s Master’s champion, missed the cut this week, finishing 2-under (67-71).
Most players rave about TPC River Highlands, how it’s “gettable” or “attackable,” how the back nine mixes birdie opportunities with potential pitfalls to keep so many in play on Sunday afternoon. This tournament has been coughed up over the final few holes several times. The course is not easy everywhere, or all the time.
But it’s easier than most.
McCarthy on Thursday and Rickie Fowler on Saturday both posted 60, giving this year’s tournament two of the six 60s in tournament’s 72-year history. Five players posted a 62 this week. That’s offense. It’s what most people crave in so many sports. The Warriors score 140 in an NBA game? It is celebrated. The Chiefs score 40 in an NFL game? Same thing.
But when scores go low in golf — and the impossible sport is made to look like it did this week in Cromwell — it is debated and sometimes even lamented. Everything is backwards in this sport.
“The weather has so much to do with it,” Grube said. “It’s not like they’re dealing with the same conditions every year. It’s humidity, it’s rough, green speed. There are so many things. They have to come into a different set of conditions every time they play. What’s fascinating to me is how they make all these adjustments. What I love is seeing the best players in the world adjust to the conditions. There was rain. They were throwing darts and somebody went low, and it was contagious. Once Denny did that on Thursday, the guys were like, like, ‘Oh, god,’ and they had to switch gears.”