Quail Hollow in North Carolina is set to host this week’s 2025 PGA Championship. But ahead of the event, some PGA Tour veterans are criticizing the course and its worthiness of hosting a major. And in a new story by The Athletic’s Gabby Herzig, one pro made a negative comparison between the PGA host course and… the Kardashians?
Here’s what you need to know.
Pros criticize PGA Championship host course
The competitors at the PGA Championship aren’t strangers to Quail Hollow. The course has hosted an annual Tour event since 2003. Previously, it hosted the Kemper Open in the 1970s.
But major championships are different. At the four biggest events, fans and players are used to seeing historic courses that provide challenging tests for the world’s best pros.
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Although despite hosting the 2017 PGA Championship, won by Justin Thomas, Quail Hollow doesn’t fit that description, at least according to many of the pros and TV analysts quoted by Herzig in her report for The Athletic.
Herzig also went deep on the history of the course, detailing numerous course changes and renovations seemingly made to benefit spectators and tournaments, not the quality of the challenge.
Former PGA Tour pro and current NBC Golf analyst Johnson Wagner summed up that argument in Herzig’s story, which you can read in full here.
“It seems like every design change we make is to make it a better venue for the public and for infrastructure,” Wagner said, “rather than for the golf course.”
But it’s a quote from another former Tour pro, Hunter Mahan, that really caught social media’s attention.
Hunter Mahan’s Quail Hollow Kardashian comparison
Mahan was one of the leading players on the PGA Tour more than a decade ago. From 2007 to 2014, he captured six PGA Tour wins and collected top-10 finishes in all four majors.
In that time, he had plenty of experience at Quail Hollow, though he didn’t qualify for the 2017 PGA there.
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In Herzig’s report, Mahan shared a negative opinion about the course as a major championship host. And to do so, he made an inventive comparison between the course and “a Kardashian,” a member of the celebrity family that includes Kim Kardashian.
“I guess I would say Quail Hollow is like a Kardashian. It’s very modern, beautiful and well-kept,” Mahan told The Athletic, before dropping the dagger, “but it lacks a soul or character.”
Mahan’s critiques hit on a common observation about the PGA Championship — that many of the tournament’s host courses lack the prestige of iconic, difficult courses that host golf’s other majors.
This year’s set of major courses is a good example.
The U.S. Open will be played at historic Oakmont Country Club, one of the hardest and most famous courses in the world. The Open Championship will visit Royal Portrush in July, a course ranked No. 16 on GOLF’s Top 100 Courses in the World ranking (Oakmont is 8th on that list). And no one would argue that Masters host Augusta National doesn’t fit the major bill.
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