‘Straight carnage’: Bay Hill’s ‘dead’ greens pushing pros to the edge

Halfway through the Arnold Palmer Invitational, the only thing tougher than holding Bay Hill’s greens is describing their color.

“The greens are like, white,” said Daniel Berger. “It’s just going to be like a U.S. Open.”

And that’s the guy who’s winning. By five. More on him in a minute.

Collin Morikawa, who’s tied for third, offered his own estimation. “They’re getting brown and they’re going to be very, very brown, if not purple, by Sunday,” he said. A reporter asked for a color-scale clarification: as greens get slick, do they go to yellow, then to brown, then to purple?

“Pretty much,” he said.

Bay Hill is pushing its greens to the brink, and that’s pushing players to the brink — and beyond. Approach shots are landing and ejecting, trampoline-style, off firm surfaces and into the rough waiting beyond. The greens are nearly frictionless, stimping at nearly 14 (translation: very fast) and scary. It’s fun to watch; firm, fast golf always is. It also seems exhausting to play.

The image of the day was World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler missing a par putt at No. 18, tapping in for bogey and then heaving his ball into the greenside lake (with impressive velocity, I should add) before adding some colorful commentary.

He later offered a succinct description of the putting surfaces.

“They’re already dead,” he told Doug Ferguson of theAP. “I’m not sure how much deader they can get. Like, 15 is completely dead.”

Fifteen is where Scheffler stood and watched, incredulous, as his bunker shot just kept rolling, past the flag and all the way off the green. Then he chipped in for par. It was a reminder of just how good Scheffler is, just how good top Tour pros are and just how far the PGA Tour has to push a golf course to protect par.

Want a positive spin on the conditions? Let’s go to one of the most positive people on the planet, Sahith Theegala, who’s relishing the challenge.

“I think just the conditions are so perfect,” he said. “I definitely see them letting it bake out this weekend. Not that they aren’t already firm, they’re already pretty firm. You’re playing for a bounce on every single approach shot, even with a wedge. So, but, yeah, it’s part of the reason why I love this place; it’s just straight carnage.”

Others echoed that sentiment. Great shots still get rewarded, but imprecision is roundly punished. It’s worth noting that the scoring average isn’t crazy high, just slightly over par, but while some courses protect par by eliminating par-5s, Bay Hill has four, all reachable, plus a couple short par-4s where bombers can get their tee shots greenside. That leaves about a dozen holes to play what Rickie Fowler described as “a lot of defense.”

If things are so tough, how is Berger at 13 under par? In part thanks to an incredible nine-under-par first round in softer Thursday morning conditions. A weekend 63 feels unlikely.

Jordan Spieth dished perhaps the most in-depth description of what makes these greens so different. The speeds themselves aren’t the issue, he said; it’s the lack of friction from dormant Bermudagrass greens. That means wind can play a big factor, and it means trusting the break is especially tough. In other words: a ball in motion can just keep going.

“I think this is the only place [like that],” he said. “Occasionally U.S. Opens can get like this. And then I guess the [Cognizant Classic], before they overseeded. Then it could get like this at The Players in May [before it moved back to March]. But no one else really leaves it dormant and let’s it die any more, dormant Bermuda. Everybody overseeds. This is pretty much all that’s left, I think.”

It’s a limited field, just 72 players, which means a limited cut; 3 over par or higher and you’re done for the week. Plenty did go higher. Justin Rose shot 80 on Friday. J.T. Poston shot 81. And Justin Thomas picked a particularly tough tournament to stage his comeback from injury; he made no excuses, calling his 79-79 last-place finish “pretty miserable.” PGA Tour Live commentator Robert Damron reported Thomas deposited an iron in the water at No. 11 in the midst of his triple-bogey 7.

Thomas found a silver lining in his missed cut.

“That is one good thing about not playing here this weekend because it is going to suck.”

Suck to play, perhaps. Not to watch. PGA Tour fans are ready for this. The West Coast Swing can be tough, with Torrey Pines and TPC Scottsdale and Pebble Beach and Riviera all owning plenty of teeth, but not this year. There was the American Express (Scheffler won at 27 under) and then Torrey Pines (Justin Rose, 23 under) and then TPC Scottsdale (Chris Gotterup in a playoff at 16 under) and Pebble Beach (Collin Morikawa, 22 under) and then Riviera (Jacob Bridgeman, over par on Sunday and still won at 18 under). A softened, overseeded PGA National yielded Nico Echavarria’s winning score of 17 under last week, too. This could be the first week of the season that 15 under wins. That may depend on how Berger navigates greens he described as “borderline too quick” but smartly characterized as a “fantastic challenge.”

Rory McIlroy spelled out that challenge.

“It’s difficult even if you hit the ball in the fairway, with this little bit of breeze, with the firm greens, I mean, it’s hard to get the ball close. You’re hitting good iron shots to 25, 30 feet all the time, and then you’re not going to make a lot of those. So you really have to make the bulk of your score on the par-5s and just stay really patient for the rest of the way.”

And Berger laid out the inevitable.

“I feel like it’s definitely not going to get easier.”

We hope not.