ATLANTA – With $25 million going to this week’s winner on the Tour Championship and the sport’s greatest gamers making an attempt to finish their seasons on a excessive be aware, it was barely counterintuitive that the thrill on the vary Tuesday on the finale wasn’t about both the ready wealth or the circuit’s embarrassment of riches. As a substitute, Tuesday’s discuss was about East Lake’s current restoration.
By many accounts, architect Andrew Inexperienced’s handiwork reworked East Lake from a largely one-dimensional check right into a extra nuanced format that’s poised to problem the sport’s greatest in new and impressed methods.
5 issues you have to know concerning the new and improved East Lake:
- East Lake took over because the everlasting host of the Tour Championship in 2004 and has produced a variety of winners from Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson to Brandt Snedeker and Invoice Haas. However lately, the course has been dominated by the trendy bomber — with Rory McIlroy successful two of the final six occasions and Xander Schauffele ending both first or second in 4 of the final seven finales — and has, like many venues, had a troublesome time combatting distance.
Whereas size will proceed to be essential in Atlanta, driving accuracy will turn into rather more essential, notably with fairways and greens which can be exceedingly agency.
“I wouldn’t say East Lake ever had a variety of technique off the tee earlier than. It was at all times sort of tree-lined fairways, slender fairways, and also you had an occasional bunker right here and there. However often it’s simply you both hit driver or 3-wood, and you need to hit it straight,” mentioned Viktor Hovland, final 12 months’s champion at East Lake. “However at the very least right here when he’s (Inexperienced) taken away so many bushes, you actually have to emphasise the technique portion of it or else it simply turns into a bombing-fest the place everybody hits driver. I do suppose Andrew has carried out an excellent job with positioning sure bunkers.”
- Inexperienced used a 1949 aerial picture of East Lake as a information to returning the course to one thing nearer to what Donald Ross had in thoughts when he designed the unique format in 1913.
Right here’s the place gamers will start the Tour Championship with the staggered scoring format.
