PGA Championship: Why all the hate for Quail Hollow — the ‘Kardashian’ of golf courses?

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — At almost every golf tournament, there’s an undercurrent that runs parallel to the actual event: the grousing and griping about the course at hand. Yes, even though they play the finest courses on earth, pros grumble about the setup, the greens, the rough … you name an element of a tournament golf course, and somebody has a problem with it. (You can probably guess the one course that nobody dares to criticize.)

The carping — reinforced by the echo chamber that is Golf Twitter — has hit a new high this week at Quail Hollow, site of this week's PGA Championship, and since this is a major, the cuts slice a little deeper.

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“I guess I would say Quail Hollow is like a Kardashian,” Mahan told The Athletic. “It’s very modern, beautiful and well-kept. But it lacks a soul or character.”

Ouch. That’s going to leave a mark.

Quail Hollow does have its defenders, starting with Max Homa.

“I’ve always loved this place,” Homa, standing a few steps outside the T-Mobile “Club Magenta” tent near the 10th green, told Yahoo Sports Wednesday. “I think it’s a good version of new-age golf. … A lot of golf courses aren’t necessarily creative. They’re just making them longer. I think this place still has some cool nuance to it. The greens are still intricate. The bunkering is pretty decent. The views are cool.”

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“I don’t see how anyone could not like it,” Wyndham Clark, like Homa clad in searing T-Mobile pink, told Yahoo Sports. “A great golf course to me, in every three-hole stretch, you either have an exciting par 5; a short, really beautiful par 3; or a dogleg. And what I think this golf course has is, every three holes, you have one of those, and so it excites people.”

Now, bear in mind that Homa and Clark are both past winners at Quail Hollow; they claimed the Wells Fargo (now Truist) Championship here in 2022 and 2023, respectively. So they’re going to have a much more charitable view of the course than most, given their fond memories.

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But then again, others who have had a bit of success here too aren’t exactly gushing over Quail Hollow. Their verdict is more like a Google review of a local Applebee’s — it’s fine, you know exactly what to expect, it’s fine.

“I thought it was going to feel different just because it was a major championship, and I got out on the golf course [Monday], and it felt no different than last year at the Wells Fargo,” four-time Quail Hollow winner Rory McIlroy said early Wednesday morning. “The rough is maybe a little juicier. But fairways are still the same cut lines and same visuals. It doesn't feel that much different.”

“The Wells Fargo in the past has always been the week prior to this, so it will be very, very similar,” said Justin Thomas, who won his first PGA Championship here in 2017. “That's the one thing about this place. I feel like you kind of always know relatively what you're going to get. It's just figuring out how the golf course is playing and then going-from-there-type thing.”

Developed in 1959, Quail Hollow has hosted that regular Tour stop — the Wachovia/Wells Fargo/Truist, depending on who’s sponsoring — since 2003. The course hosted its first major in 2017, and three years ago hosted the Presidents Cup. So it’s not like Quail Hollow is going to sneak up on anybody … and that might be part of the problem.

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“A familiar golf course is nice,” Jordan Spieth said earlier this week. “I don't feel like I have to learn where all the pins are and where all the misses are and stuff. You can ask me the hole location on any green around this place right now, and I can tell you how I'm going to play the hole and where I'm going to try to hit it.”

The same can be said of Augusta National every year, but no one is bagging on it Masters week.

So why all the hatred?

Perhaps because Quail Hollow is geared more toward television viewers and outside-the-ropes hospitality tents than to the actual players on the course. What works well for the players doesn’t necessarily make for the best TV … and vice versa. Towering drives look great on TV, but when every player in the field is aiming at — and finding — the same spots, hole after hole, well … the strategic aspect of the tournament becomes a bit less significant.

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“Because we all know this golf course so well, it's not as if you're going to glean anything new (this week) from a strategy perspective,” McIlroy said. “It's just a matter of stepping up and hitting the golf shots when the gun goes on Thursday.”

For certain players, there’s an upside to Quail Hollow’s familiarity. Players who have had success here, and particularly players who have won here, can potentially draw on those good memories as the weekend winds down and the leaderboard tightens up.

“I will always be able to say, if I'm coming down the stretch and trying to win the tournament, I can tell myself I've literally done this before here,” Thomas said earlier this week. “I've hit the shots. I've made the putts. I've handled all of that mentally on this exact golf course in this exact tournament.”

Visually, Quail Hollow is magnificent — lush and green, with towering trees and a regal white clubhouse. But if that description is sounding a bit familiar, well, that too might be part of the problem.

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Quail Hollow echoes Augusta National without the history or on-course drama of the home of the Masters, and unlike clubhouses or courses, you can’t simply buy your way into legendary status. That takes time … and major success. Every course hosted its first major once; the truly great ones just keep on hosting.

Unlike the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship hasn’t scheduled out its venues into the second half of the 21st century. The first available PGA Championship date is 2033, and Quail Hollow doesn’t yet have a third date in the rotation. A compelling tournament free of off-course drama (sorry, Valhalla) with a popular winner might just be enough to convince the PGA that there’s merit in bringing a major back to Gleneagles Road in south Charlotte … regardless of what the critics say.

After all, as the Kardashians proved, it doesn’t matter what they’re saying about you as long as they’re still talking about you.