Southern Hills trumps the competition

Venerable Oklahoma course is hosting 2022 PGA Championship

We are 12 days removed from the commencement of the PGA Championship, the second of golf's major championships this year. The tournament was originally slated for the Trump Bedminster Golf Club in New Jersey, but the PGA of America pulled the plug on that site in January of 2021. The PGA of America contended that contesting its championship “was detrimental to the PGA brand.” With less than 16 months to move to a new course, the PGA of America was able to secure the Southern Hills Country Club in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Without getting mired into the politics of all this, Southern Hills is an outstanding traditional-style American golf that has been on golf's center stage since the conclusion of World War II when Babe Zaharias won the 1946 United States Women's Amateur. This will be the fifth time that the PGA Championship has been contested at Southern Hills and it has also hosted a trio of U.S. Opens, two PGA Tour Championships, and a pair of U.S. Amateurs. It will be the site of the 2024 U.S. Women's Amateur.

During the heart of America's Great Depression, a collection of Tulsa's movers and shakers put forth a proposal to Waite Phillips, a multi-millionaire banker who was part of the Phillips 66 corporate family. The year was 1935 and the businessmen wanted Phillips to head up a project that would include a championship golf course, tennis courts, swimming facilty and riding trails. They also wanted to build a classic clubhouse for the membership that would include restaurants and other areas for business meetings.

Because of the financial times, Phillips was obviously skeptical about the success of such a large-scale project. He told Tulsa's business leaders that he would oversee such a project if they could secure financing. As hard as it may be to believe, the business community was able to get 150

people to sign up for club membership with a $1,000 down payment. With $150,000 in the bank, Phillips was able to talk golf course architect Perry Maxwell into designing what would be named the Southern Hills Country Club.

Maxwell got actively into the golf business in the early 1920s following the death of his wife in 1919. His first golf course of note was the Dornack Hills Golf Club in Oklahoma. It opened for play in 1923 and was especially noteworthy because it was the first golf course in Oklahoma to feature grass greens instead of sand greens. Perry then began a middle-America partnership with one of the godfathers of golden era golf architecture, namely Alister Mackenzie (Meadow Club, Pasatiempo, Cypress Point). While Mackenzie was the visionary who envisioned how the course should look, Maxwell was the hands-on guy who was constantly onsite to make sure everything was being done correctly. Two of the Mackenzie-Maxwell golf courses of note were Crystal Downs and the University of Michigan Golf Course. As a brief aside, Crystal Downs is constantly ranked as one of America's top-20 rated courses. I played there some 25 years ago with well-known golf course architect Mike DeVries (The Kingsley Club, Greywalls, redo of the Meadow Club) and top-notch Michigan amateur Jim Hegarty of Grand Rapids.

Mackenzie died in the early 1930s and Maxwell was able to stay active during the Depression with projects such as Southern Hills and Prairie Dunes. Maxwell took a page from the Macknezie book on golf architecture and was known for his creative undulating greens. In fact, fans of the game will see some similarity between the greens at Southern Hills and the putting surfaces at the Mackenzie-designed Au- gusta National, home of the Masters. Maxwell was very active during the building phase of Southern Hills and was on the premises on a near daily basis to oversee a large crew of men who built the course with picks and shovels. Maxwell would go on to design over 70 courses on his own as well as being involved in the remodel of another 50 courses. After World War II, Maxwell served as a design partner with his son, Press Maxwell.

Southern Hills will play to just less than 7,500 yards this time around and will have two par3s that measure more than 220 yards and a number of par-4s that can be stretched out to more than 480 yards. Gil Hanse, the Open Doctor who designed the 2016 Olympic Golf Course in Rio de Janeiro, was involved in the redo of the course in 2019.

It is safe to say that over the time that Southern Hills has hosted three U.S. Opens and four PGA Championships that the champions have been golfers of note. Six of the seven winners have been multiple major winners. Tommy “Thunder” Bolt won the U.S. Open at Southern Hills in 1958, running away from the field with a four-stroke victory over a very young Gary Player. In 1977, Hubert Green won the National Open at Southern Hills, defeating Lou Graham by one stroke. South African Retief Goosen outlasted the rest of the field on Southern Hills' treacherous greens in the 2001 U.S. Open, beating Mark Brooks in an 18-hole Monday playoff.

The story was very much the same in a quartet of PGA Championships at Southern Hills. Putting guru Dave Stockton

won the 1970 PGA by two strokes over Bob Murphy and Arnold Palmer. Palmer would never win the PGA and Murphy had won the U.S. Amateur in Tulsa five years earlier. Raymond Floyd took home the Wanamaker Trophy in 1982 with a three-stroke win over Lanny Watkins.

Nick Price won his second major of the summer of 1994 with a triumph in the PGA at Southern Hills, running away from the field with runner-up Corey Pavin six strokes behind him. Tiger Woods showed his talents at the 2007 PGA at Southern Hills, winning his 13th major and fourth PGA Championship with a rock-solid three-stroke victory over journeyman Woody Austin in the searing August heat.

This time around the pros will be playing Southern Hills in kinder, gentler weather in Tulsa in May. The eventual titlist in two weeks will have to have a gifted putting stroke and enough of a power game to survive Southern Hills and its massive length. The complex also has a nine-hole course designed by Ben Crenshaw and that area will be used for the merchandise booths, press tents and the other elements of infrastructure that go along with the running of a one of golf's grand slam championships. Although Southern Hills was a late invite to the party that is the 2022 PGA Championship, it has the design and the history for the making of a special week.

It is safe to say that over the time that Southern Hills has hosted three U.S. Opens and four PGA Championships that the champions have been golfers of note. Six of the seven winners have been multiple major winners.