East Lake 2.24 'It’s just a new golf course'
Andrew Green renovation stuns players; Bradley wants the best Americans in 2025
New seventh hole at East Lake (Even Schiller)
The Tour Championship this week will be played at a brand new golf course — East Lake Golf Club. Don’t let the familiar name and 120 years of existence fool you.
“It’s got the same name. It’s East Lake Golf Club. It’s on the same property, similar square footage,” said Xander Schauffele. “But that’s about it.”
East Lake underwent a complete renovation in the 51 weeks since the 2023 Tour Championship concluded, led by golf course architect Andrew Green. The details of the makeover were thoroughly chronicled by Scott Michaux in Monday’s Global Golf Post.
When players start arriving for this week’s Tour Championship, they will drive into the front gate of what is unmistakably East Lake Golf Club. The Tudor-style clubhouse; the centerpiece lake that bisects the front and back nines; the holes set in all the same places on the 178-acre rectangular plot in the middle of a once-blighted but revitalized neighborhood east of the downtown skyline – it will all look immediately familiar to the players who have finished their PGA Tour season here year after year.
But once the golfers set foot on the course, they’ll be in uncharted territory. This East Lake golf course isn’t the same East Lake golf course they left last August when Viktor Hovland sailed past Scottie Scheffler to win the FedEx Cup. The routing is the same, but everything else – the greens, tees, bunkers, fairway contours and grasses – is completely different.
It could be very disorienting for someone such as Xander Schauffele, who seemed to have East Lake figured out with the low 72-hole score three times in seven starts while never shooting over par in 28 Tour Championship rounds. He’ll be starting his course knowledge this week from scratch just like everyone else.
Architect Andrew Green, the hottest name in today’s course-makeover game along with Gil Hanse, gave East Lake the same treatment he delivered at Congressional Country Club. He reinvented a course on top of an existing footprint and took it from stale to fresh. The architectural pedigree at East Lake includes Tom Bendelow, Donald Ross, George Cobb and Rees Jones, but it is now a Green design using Ross as his muse in an effort to update a classic layout in the manner he did at Oak Hill, Wannamoisett, Scioto and Inverness.
The 30-player field got their first look at the place Monday and Tuesday and had much to say about it.
“I mean, it’s just a new golf course,” said Schauffele, with a tone that illustrated he wishes that he’d chain himself in front ot the bulldozers to stop the project. “Kind of a glass half full guy, so I’ve played a lot of new courses this year that I’ve done okay at them. And this is a brand new property. Literally the bunkers are new, the grasses are new in the fairways, the greens are new, the grass on the greens are new, the runouts are different, the slopes are different. I think the only thing that's the same are the directions of the hole.
“Whatever record I had is the past. I have no memory or anything really on any hole to go off of, not even a tree I could aim at that I used to aim at. It’s just that different.”
Scottie Scheffler, who starts his third straight FedEx Cup finale as the top seed at 10-under with a two-shot lead on Schauffele, has never had the same success at the old East Lake as the man chasing him.
“It’s definitely interesting. It’s basically a new golf course from what it was before. It’s not really at all the same,” Scheffler said. “The greens, since they’re new, are extremely firm, which I think makes it more challenging. It’ll be tough to access some of the hole locations. I think we’ll have a bit to learn in terms of golf course setup.
“This was a golf course I always really liked. I felt like I hadn’t played my best golf here. So coming here this year, seeing a fresh golf course that I think is going to be really challenging I think will suit me pretty well out there.”
Viktor Hovland, who won the FedEx Cup last year with the same 72-hole score as Schauffele, was taken aback by the course transformation.
“Just as soon as I walked on the property, I was kind of shocked,” Hovland said. “It looks nothing like it used to. Seems like he’s basically changed every single hole out there. It was just kind of wild how much you can actually change the holes with not really moving holes around. It’s all kind of in the same place, but yet none of the holes look exactly the same.
“I could probably try to describe a person that’s never been here before what it used to look like, and it’s almost like you can’t imagine it. It’ll be interesting to kind of get used to it, that’s for sure.
“I started off of 1, so when I saw 1, I’m like, wow, this is completely different. As soon as I saw the green areas, that was like, okay, wow, this is going to be a completely different golf course because now you have huge undulating greens with big runoffs, and instead of having tight Bermuda around the greens, you have really, really tight Zoysia. It’s just going to play completely different. I felt like the rest of the course was kind of indicative of what I saw on No. 1.”
Trench bunker on new par-4 17th at East Lake (Even Schiller)
Rory McIlroy, the only three-time FedEx Cup champion at East Lake, had no complaints about the new course that greeted him.
“I like it; I like what Andrew Green does,” McIlroy said. “It reminds me of the work he did at Oak Hill and Congressional.”
Andrew Green is anxious to see how it plays this week and how the players respond to his work, knowing full well that some players won’t like it and prefer things not to change.
“If you think about any golf course renovation or restoration, you have a group of people that have made memories on their golf course, and overcoming that, playing with your dad, your kids, whatever, there’s memories, and that’s hard,” he said.
“But it’s still the right thing to do for the future is the right thing to do for the future. So here I’m sure there will be some sentiment of the shots they played before. The greens are way more interesting now than they were previously, and there will be some … yeah, I’m sure there will be some comments like that. But at some point you have to embrace the integrity of what this place means in order to kind of reset that, remind us to the past and push us to the future. This is what we needed to do.”
U.S. Ryder Cup captain Keegan Bradley (PGA of America)
Bradley: ‘The best 12 players’
Unlike his predecessor, Keegan Bradley is not dancing around the question when it comes to his view on having LIV Golf members as part of his Ryder Cup team.
The U.S. captain, who was the surprise choice of the PGA of America, has said that he wants the 12 best players on his team when the Americans try to regain the Cup next year at Bethpage Black.
In the aftermath of his victory on Sunday at the BMW Championship — where Bradley put himself in the conversation for a pick by captain Jim Furyk for next month’s Presidents Cup — the seven-time PGA Tour winner was asked where things such as qualification criteria and LIV players stood as the official system has yet to be announced.
“I’m going to have the best 12 players, so the PGA of America. . . we’re going to have the 12 best players, so they need to figure that out, if that's their problem,’’ Bradley said. “I know you have to be a PGA (of America) member to play in the Ryder Cup.
“That’s the only stipulation that you need. So we’ll make sure if some of those guys that we think might make the team, we’ll make sure that they are a member.”
Last year for Rome, Brooks Koepka was the only LIV player picked by captain Zach Johnson, who at times was coy about how much consideration a LIV golfer might get. He was criticized for saying he would have a hard time judging them because he could not see them play in LIV events.
Bradley has not taken that stance. He understands who the best players are and figures that it will sort itself out by this time next year, when decisions need to be made.
The Ryder Cup qualification process has already begun as players have been able to earn points this year at the major championships and the Players Championship. DeChambeau, who won the U.S. Open, is third behind Xander Schauffele and Scottie Scheffler, although the PGA of America is going by the system in place for the 2023 Ryder Cup.
“I don’t see there being any big tweaks,” Bradley said. “I think the system — to finish in the top six is really difficult. I don’t think that — those always identify the best six, I think, on the U.S. side.
“The only weird area is the LIV guys, what they do and where they fall on the list. We’re going to have to really get with the captains, get with the team that’s going to be there and figure that out.
“But I think the system works. I haven’t heard from anyone, any previous captains of anyway they would change it. But we'll look into it.”
Bradley, 38, said he’d love to play in the Ryder Cup next year but would likely only do so if he earned one of those six spots.
“No one has really had the opportunity that I’ve had,” said Bradley, referencing being a full-time player on the PGA Tour. “I think you could have given Phil (Mickelson) or Tiger (Woods) a chance to be captain at my age and they would have played on the teams. But it’s never really had a chance to happen.
“It’s going to be really hard for me to make that team, but if I make the team, I’ll play. I don't see myself being a captain’s pick. But I’ll be proud to just be the captain. If I have to go out there and play, I’d love to do that, too.”
The U.S. has not had a playing captain at the Ryder Cup since 1963, when Arnold Palmer was 34 years old. That event was played at East Lake Golf Club, where Bradley has advanced to the season-ending Tour Championship this week. He will start Thursday’s competition in fourth place, four shots back of leader Scheffler in the starting strokes format used to determine the FedEx Cup champion.