Olympic Routs Kiawah In 2012 Tougest Tests List

PGATour.com staff lists the top twenty toughest courses on the PGA Tour and the ten easiest. Three of the four major championship sites were in the top 5, with Augusta National landing 8th.

The Jack Nicklaus Private Course at PGA West played the easiest in 2012.

Comments

[Hawkeye]

Augusta's stats might be a little skewed, though, with a large percentage of amateurs and former champions who can't hit their hat anymore in the field. Ditto the PGA - the club pros can't have averaged below 82 in the second round at Kiawah. Not that these stats mean anything, though...

[RES]

Hawkeye,

To be fair, the days of Bob Goalby, Gay Brewer and Doug Ford shooting 90's at Augusta are gone. In recent years, the oldest guys have dropped out, and in 2012 the only true "over the hill guys" in the field who might have artificially raised the scoring average were Stadler, Crenshaw, Mize, Lyle and Woosnam. Surely the rash of sectional qualifiers raised the scoring average at Olympic as much as those five did?

But to your larger point, I agree about the silliness. If Kiawah had hosted the US
Open and Olympic had hosted the PGA, I'm sure that Kiawah would have been ranked the hardest this year.

[phil the author]

In addition, turning the 7th hole at Bethpage Black back to a par-5 while not appreciably lengthening the hole automatically reduces its score to par average by a stroke. Add in that the hole locations were very benign and that it again played soft due to rain and here is another true "Mankiller" that appears less than what it actually is.

I wonder how the combination of PGA Tour set-ups with wet courses and a few lift, clean, & place at tournaments actually skew these types of numbers...

[Hawkeye]

RES, the players you mentioned ARE the Goalbys, Brewers and Caspers of the 2010s, and they combined to average 79,1 for their rounds this year. But just wait for the 2030's and see what Weir, Immelman and Cabrera will shoot then... ;) But sure, there are lots of below-Tour-quality players at the US Open too.