Advantage to long hitters at Baltusrol

At 7,540 yards, ‘big boy golf course’ means the drivers are coming out

What Baltusrol may lack in charm, it tends to make up for with great champions.

This week’s PGA Championship will be played on Baltusrol’s Lower Course, about 40 minutes outside Manhattan, where Jack Nicklaus won the 1967 and 1980 U.S. Opens and Phil Mickelson won this championship in 2005.

The classic course was designed in 1922 by A.W. Tillinghast, architect of many major championship courses, including Winged Foot and Bethpage Black.

Rich Beem, who won the 2002 PGA Championship at Hazeltine, summed up what players will face this week.

“It’s kind of just a big boy golf course,” Beem said beside the 18th green after his practice round on Tuesday.

At 7,450 yards and par 70, he wasn’t kidding. The opening hole is a 478-yard par 4 that normally plays as a par 5 for Baltusrol members. It was the third most difficult hole when the PGA Championship was played here in 2005.

The short 377-yard par 4 second hole offers players a chance to steady themselves.

During practice rounds on Tuesday, most players were laying up with an iron rather than take on the cross bunkers 275 yards from the tee.

This leaves a blind approach shot to a fairly difficult green. Even though it was the third easiest hole in 2005, the second hole still played a shade over par for the week.

The third hole is a 503-yard brute of a par 4 that was the second-most difficult hole last time around. Every player wants to get off to a good start but it won’t be easy this week at Baltusrol where the winning score was just four-under par in 2005.

“It definitely favours the long hitters if they can hit the fairways,” Beem said.

Even if the bombers are missing fairways, they still should have an advantage because the rough, although long, is graduated and players should be able to advance the ball without too much difficulty.

Baltusrol hosted a major in all but one decade of the 20th century, so golf fans will see a style of golf course they are quite familiar with. This isn’t Whistling Straits or Chambers Bay — there will be no question what a bunker is or whether the greens will disintegrate before our eyes.

This is a classic tree-lined parkland course built over flat terrain.

“Everything is straight out in front of you,” Rory McIlroy said on Tuesday. “There’s no real hidden secrets to it and I feel that’s what really let’s me excel.”