What is the point of a major-championship test?
More than half a century later, Sandy Tatum’s pithy line from the 1974 U.S. Open at Winged Foot — “We’re not trying to humiliate the best players in the world,” the USGA’s then-president said. “We’re trying to identify who they are” — still holds up nicely. So, it came as some surprise, this past weekend, to hear Tatum’s famous words turned on their head. It happened at the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship, in Texas, where a frustrated Stacy Lewis suggested that a major-championship stage should “make us all look good.” Unfortunately, Lewis went on, the demanding setup at Fields Ranch East at Omni PGA Frisco, had made “very good players look silly.”
Judging from that quote, it made a certain player sound silly, anyway.
In fairness to Lewis, she was at her wit’s end, having missed the cut after grinding through a pair of six-hour rounds on a baked-out, windblown setup. She was also trying to make a broader argument: that slow-play and double-bogeys were bad optics for a women’s game that is desperate to draw more eyeballs.
Point taken. The best female players in the world could use a larger audience.
But was Lewis casting blame in the right place? Another criticism of Fields Ranch East this week came from Lewis’s peer, Angel Yin, who described the layout as “quite boring.”
Really? More boring than the bomb-and-gouge golf that undermines so many tournaments throughout the year?
If anything, one could argue, Fields Ranch East represented a refreshing change, a strategic course that required proper positioning off the tee for players to then take aim at the flag. Place your first shot in the wrong spot, and you were destined for trouble on your next.
It was, in other words, a tough exam, made more demanding by firm and blustery conditions. But a far cry from “boring” or “unfair.”
Among the interested observers of this past week’s event, watching on TV, was the architect Gil Hanse, who, in collaboration with Jim Wagner, designed Fields Ranch East with major championships in mind.
“I think it pointed out to me how much of an emphasis was placed on proper positioning off the tee in order to hit greens and have them hold down wind,” Hanse told GOLF.com by email. “If the players got to the right places off the tee, to create a good angle, they had a much better chance of hitting a good shot into the green. If they got out of position off the tee, then the wind really exacerbated the penalties of coming into the greens from a bad angle.
“Obviously, we would have loved to have the wind be a little gentler.” But, he added, “since we talk so much about angles and strategy, it made me proud to see it come into being.”
It was also worth remembering, Hanse continued, “that this is a new course, with no track record of setup for a women’s major championship.” The only prior major held at Fields Ranch East was the 2023 Kitchen Aid Senior PGA Championship, where Steve Stricker’s winning score was 18-under.
That reminded Hanse of something else.
“The other thing we’re proud of is that the course has now produced two wonderful champions in Steve Stricker and Minjee Lee.”
You get the feeling Sandy Tatum would have approved.
