Does major change to Bay Hill make it easier or harder? We’re about to find out

Every year, changes to PGA Tour courses are made and almost no one notices. Players are sent a synopsis of changes by the tournament committee, but often they are barely visible. The cut of the rough, the new tee box on the 13th hole, etc. But this week, there is a wild change to the 17th hole at Bay Hill for this week’s Arnold Palmer Invitational.

The snaking bunker that lined the water hazard up the right side of the 221-yard par-3 17th is … no longer. Poof! It’s gone. As if someone playing a video game decided to swap out course architecture features overnight. What was once a sandy haven — tournament organizers called it a beach bunker — that gobbled up shots landing short and right of the green is now filled with rough … and some water. 

“The pond has been extended into this space,” reads a note shared with players this week, “and now a grass slope at rough height is all that exists between the water and the right side of this green.”

What does that mean, exactly? Visually, something like what you see below. 

But what does it mean for how the hole will play? 

That’s the question that matters, right? The rough length in the picture above is about 4 inches long, and if it’s not quite that, it’ll be cut to that before Thursday’s opening round begins. But to use pro Michael Kim’s tweeted analysis above, rough isn’t exactly what the golf sickos want to see. Often, around the greens, PGA Tour fans would rather see closely mown areas where the ball will move on the ground. As Kim notes, the shot that left him here, on the bank, landed about one foot left of where it came to rest. In a world where that bank is mown to fairway height, the shot almost surely rolls into the hazard. 

Importantly, though, this isn’t just a cop-out to make life easier for Tour pros. As you can see in the screenshots below, the Tour’s ShotLink platform shows that there is an increased presence of the hazard creeping in on the green, where there once was a sandy catch-all basin. Only three players in the 2024 Arnold Palmer Invitational made a double-bogey 5, and all three missed far right and short of the green. 

But as you can see, plenty of players (at least when playing to Sunday’s long-right hole location) left their shots short and right and in the bunker. A number of those shots would be water-balls in 2025, implying a surefire increase in double bogeys we could expect. 

The analytical pro will avoid hazards at all costs, though, so one could expect the variance of misses to lean further left on the hole this year than in years past. How that intersects with the back nine on Sunday in contention should make for a boost in intrigue down the stretch. And who knows, maybe the rough is just a stop-gap between the beach bunker and closely mown areas, just like Michael Kim’s sickos would dream for.