Golf betting at the Major Championships, and especially the PGA Championship, is a complex subject. Mistakes can be costly, however select the right player or player portfolio and the rewards can be excellent. Golf Betting System’s goal is to provide you with informed PGA Championship tips, free tournament research guides and insight and information that will help you make educated decisions about who to back at the 2023 US PGA Championship.
The PGA Championship in recent history has seen a plethora of long hitters getting the job done, with many capturing their first Major titles in this event. The PGA of America’s choice of Oak Hill in 2013 raised eyebrows as the classical and downright claustrophobic nature of the course was totally alien to its mantra of testing through course length. As it transpired, the neat and tidy Jason Dufner won his first Major that week.
Either side of Oak Hill, Y.E. Yang (2009), Martin Kaymer (2010), Keegan Bradley (2012), Jason Day (2015), Jimmy Walker (2016) and Justin Thomas (2017) have, like Dufner, all captured first-time Majors. All can hit the ball a long way, as can Rory McIlroy (winner at both Kiawah Island in 2012 and Valhalla in 2014), Brooks Koepka who drove the field into submission at both Bellerive (2018) and Bethpage Black (2019), plus Phil Mickelson (2021) who despite being the wrong side of 50 years of age, averaged 313 yards off the tee when winning at Kiawah Island in 2021. Justin Thomas won his 2nd PGA Championship title last year, averaging the mere matter of 321 yards with the driver.
As we expected, 2020 proved slightly different with the tighter 7,200 yard, Par 70 at TPC Harding Park falling to another Major first-timer in the form of Collin Morikawa. Now you can’t classify Morikawa as a ‘bomber’, but averaging 297 yards off the tee and in the top 80 for ‘Driving Distance – All Drives’ across 2020, Collin is certainly no slouch from off the tee.
Course Information
East Course, Oak Hill Country Club, Rochester, New York: Designer: Donald Ross, 1925, with Andrew Green 2020; Course Type: Classical, Technical, Long; Par: 70; Length: 7,394 yards ; Holes with Water Hazards: 6; Fairways: Bentgrass with Poa Annua; Rough: Ryegrass, Bluegrass and Tall Fescue; Greens: 4,500 sq.ft average featuring Bentgrass.
The East Course at Oak Hill Country Club has hosted 6 Major Championships, including the U.S. Open 3 times (1956, 1968, 1989) and 3 PGA Championships (1980, 2003, 2013), plus the 1995 Ryder Cup. The 2023 PGA Championship though will be the first time that we see a new East Course, which has been facilitated by a 2019 renovation under the auspices of Andrew Green. This will be the first time that top-level competitive action takes place on the course, which has seen significant changes since Jason Dufner plotted his way around here in 2013 to win his one and only Major Championship.
The East Course is a Donald Ross 1925 original, which has been updated by Andrew Green. An old-style parkland golf course described as one of America’s finest classical golf courses, it has little water in-play and now stretches to 7,400 yards, which makes it very much a typical PGA Championship venue, especially as it plays as a Par 70. A list of Donald Ross designs are listed below:
Donald Ross
- Aronimink – 2010/11 AT&T National & 2018 BMW Championship
- Detroit Golf Club – Rocket Mortgage Classic
- East Lake Country Club – Tour Championship
- Pinehurst Number 2 – 2014 US Open
- Plainfield – 2011 & 2015 Barclays
- Sedgefield Country Club – Wyndham Championship
The East Course at Oak Hill Country Club, post-2013 PGA Championship won by Jason Dufner, became a little tired. Green complexes had become smaller than Donald Ross’ original design. They had unnatural rounded edges caused by bunker sand splashing over decades, in essence creating a punchbowl feature, allowing for more approach shots to stay on the putting surface. Original Bentgrass green putting surfaces had also been infested with Poa Annua, as is the norm with golf courses.
Oak Hill had always been a parkland Major Championship course with small, sloping greens and tight fairways shadowed by trees. However the trees had outgrown where they had originally been located, meaning that the East Course had become so overgrown with mature trees that tee shots landing in the fairways sometimes didn’t have clear lines into the greens.
Bunkering was tired and in essence pretty scattergun in its approach, via multiple re-designs from the pencils of Trent Jones and then George Fazio, in tandem with his son Tom. Their work prior to the 1989 U.S. Open won by Curtis Strange went down badly with Oak Hill club members and the world’s best golfers alike. New holes at 5, 6 and 15 didn’t fit with this Donald Ross classic, with a freshly constructed pond in front of the 15th green prompting outcry.
So Andrew Green was given the task to bring the East Course at Oak Hill back to life and make it a venue that was fit again for Major Championship golf, while taking the course back to what the original designer had in mind.
In summary, the East Course now features a new short par-3 5th with an elevated green guarded by bunkers on 3 sides. The new 6th hole is now the most difficult hole, a 500 yard par-4 curving around Allen Creek. At the par-3 15th hole, the unpopular rock wall and pond added by the Fazios has been removed by Green, who borrowed design aesthetics from Ross’s 3rd to revive a postage stamp green.
Significant work has been done on all the greens, which in the main are tiered and elevated. Each green complex was rebuilt and redesigned to reclaim corners and edges that had receded or built-up due to sand build-up. Most of the putting surfaces were enlarged and patterned in square-like formations with the occasional extended lobe for precision hole locations. This will allow tournament officials to move pins out to green edges. In most cases the greens are not extremely contoured, and many are long and relatively thin. No Sub-Air is on the property, but with new USGA specification green complexes using the latest materials, the greens are sure to be Major Championship speed, despite the May scheduling. And most noticeably green complexes now have shaved run-off areas which feed into multiple collection areas. For the previous 2013 PGA Championship, greens were surrounded by thick penal rough. That effect is very similar to what we saw at Southern Hills last year.
Every bunker on the course has been re-worked and made to be more in Donald Ross styling. They are more rugged, bolder and do undoubtedly present a challenge. Fairway bunkering, dependent on ball positioning, can penalise half a shot up to a full shot, making players very aware of them as part of their course management strategy.
In summary, with freshly opened holes via tree removal, wider fairways, new bunkers and exposed green edges, Oak Hill’s East Course won’t look or function much like the restricted layout that Jason Dufner dissected in 2013. At the 2013 PGA Championship the East Course was a tight affair, with hundreds of trees encroaching on the course and the lines of approach. Accuracy over power won out in the end. Andrew Green’s renovation adds over 200 yards to the course length, but the removal of over 500 trees will ultimately mean that the East Course, like most PGA Championship venues, will now play more towards power off the tee rather than accuracy.
The key for punters though will be to dissect in detail the weather and what course conditions will be in play during May. Indeed it’s well worth mentioning Oak Hill’s New York State location. With the banks of Lake Ontario within 6 miles, this is a very northerly location for a mid-May hosted PGA Championship. Snow will have still been on the ground in mid-March, and with snowmelt saturating the local water table, plus plenty of precipitation as temperatures increase in the early Spring, you cannot see the East Course playing anything else bar extremely long with limited or no run on the fairways.
The PGA Championship traditionally plays to the advantage of the longer hitters and Oak Hill’s design, allied to soft turf conditions, looks like distance will reap rewards on this PGA of America layout, especially as the super elite hitters will be able to carry most of the fairway bunkers and cut corners on the dog-leg holes.
East Course at Oak Hill Country Club. A long, parkland classic, with elevated greens