Why a boring recent PGA Tour tournament setup insults players and fans

The American Express has become an interesting early-season event in recent years ever since the PGA Tour resumed holding the final round at the Stadium Course at PGA WEST. When it opened in the late 1980s, the sinewy, boldly mounded Pete Dye design was a west-coast companion to TPC Sawgrass, right down to its own island-green par-3 17th hole. It was so difficult that pros threatened to revolt after shooting sky-high scores during the tour's annual Bob Hope event.

Number 17 wasn't the Stadium Course's only fearsome par 3. Number 6 tips the scales at 255 yards from its back tee box, its green complex encompassing a peninsula jutting into a lake and rimmed by a system of railroad ties. While visually intimidating, the hole is entirely fair. At more than 19,000 square feet, the unbunkered green is not only the largest on the course, but one of the largest on any course the PGA Tour visits annually, running about 60 yards from front to back and more than 45 yards across at its widest point. For context, it is nearly five and a half times the size of the 7th green at Pebble Beach.

In the 2026 American Express, the PGA Tour set the 6th hole up at just 197 yards during the first three rounds before extending it to 227 yards with a far-back hole location for the final round. Even at that seemingly more reasonable length, the world's best golfer by far and his pursuers were playing two full tee boxes forward.

The most compelling golf courses tend to present an engaging variety of challenges, whether we're playing them ourselves or watching world-class golfers compete on them. The best architects have known this for more than a century, and it is no coincidence that the courses that captivate golfers and fans present a diverse set of problems to solve.

So why does the PGA Tour, with its ambitiously loaded new slogan "Where The Best Belong," so often serve up cupcake golf course setups that fail to test the full range of players' talents?

What are we doing here? If the PGA Tour is truly Where The Best Belong, is 255 yards really too much golf hole for them? Never mind the dry, typically dome-like winter weather conditions of the Coachella Valley. In the 40 years the hole has existed, the PGA Tour's average driving distance has increased by 40 yards. It has never been easier for elite golfers.

What Pete Dye likely envisioned as a potential driver par 3 (a type of hole considered acceptable from golf's earliest, lowest-tech days) would, in 2026, still only be a long iron for most of the field, especially considering the firmness and speed of the greens. How thrilling would it have been to see a player bravely carve a flighted fade up the front-left-to-back-right axis of the green, with water lurking on the right, from 260-plus yards? Those sorts of shots are what set pros apart from the rest of us. They are the sorts of shots you and I want to see and applaud. Why would the PGA Tour deny fans the opportunity for its greatest players to entertain us?

The neutering of one particular hole would be understandable if the rest of the golf course had any teeth. But Scheffler's microscopic 27-under par winning score came on a day when the Pete Dye Stadium Course yielded up an average score of just under 69.4. Only six holes averaged over par, and while the 6th was still one of them (3rd-toughest, albeit just .068 strokes over par), playing it as intended would have made it a higher-leverage, higher-danger moment on a golf course sorely lacking them.

Milquetoast course setup is insulting on multiple levels. It shortchanges fans the opportunity to see more interesting golf shots. It infantilizes the pros, taking away an opportunity to flex their incredible skills to the fullest extent. Worst of all, it disrespects the architect - in this case Pete Dye, who knew how to press pros' buttons as well as any author of golf courses before or since.