TOUR Insider: Mother Nature no help in Charlotte  PGATOUR.com Senior Correspondent The mid-point of the PGA TOUR's FedExCup season has arrived, and the second half begins with this week's Wachovia Championship in Charlotte, N.C., surely not the easiest place to start thinking about picking up some playoff points. For one thing, 29 of the top 30 players in the world are visiting Quail Hollow Club. For another thing, Quail Hollow is no sitting duck. A tree-lined par-72 layout of 7,442 yards with three-plus inches of rough usually offers plenty of resistance to highly skilled golfers. Now the weather is piling on.  It seems like Vijay Singh is always in the hunt at the Wachovia Championship. (Greenwood/WireImage)
A hot and dry week awaits. Not much rain has fallen in Charlotte leading up to tournament time. Do the math. Jeff Kent, the course superintendent at Quail Hollow, already has. "It won't be quite like the U.S. Open, but scoring is going to be a lot harder," he says. "It's going to be the best test I think we've ever seen here." Firm and fast, Quail Hollow is poised to cater to shotmakers who can shape shots off the tee and around the tree-infested doglegs. Greens are set to run at 11.5 to 12 on the stimpmeter -- in the flat spots, except there are only about a handful of those on the whole track. Ah, the smell of burning poly elastomers in springtime! As an added bonus, some peripheral vegetation has been removed to allow more air movement throughout the course. Golfers love wind, you know, especially the kind that swirls through the trees. What should keep the boys sane are four par 5s reachable in two and drivable par 4s at the eighth and 14th. Otherwise, you'll hear a lot of wonderful sounds, like birds chirping and teeth grinding. Worth knowing: The international contingent, no doubt warming up for the upcoming PLAYERS Championship, is rather strong for the Wachovia Championship. Six notable first-time entrants from abroad include Henrik Stenson, the No. 5 player in the world rankings. Also making their debut at Quail Hollow are Angel Cabrera, Darren Clarke, David Howell, Bernhard Langer and Jose Maria Olazabal. Scott Verplank changed shafts in his irons last week on his way to winning the EDS Byron Nelson Championship. Along the same lines, Ian Poulter had Cobra make him a new set of irons with a bit more weight, and the result was a tie for third at the EDS Byron Nelson Championship. He might be dangerous this week. Tiger Woods, who has finished third and 11th in his two Wachovia Championship appearances, makes his first start since the Masters at Quail Hollow Club. He might be sporting a new driver; a news report says he used a Nike Sumo driver during practice rounds last week at Oakmont Country Club, site of this year's U.S. Open. "The question is whether I use it at the Wachovia (Championship)," Woods told the Associated Press. "I already know what my other driver does. It did all right at Augusta National." Charles Howell III missed his first cut in 11 starts this year at the EDS Byron Nelson Championship. The last four times Howell has missed the cut, he's come back the next week with a top-20 finish. He has one top-10 finish and two in the top 25 at the Wachovia Championship. No player scored in the 60s at Quail Hollow for all four rounds. Only twice has anyone posted three sub-70 rounds: Arron Oberholser did it for the first three rounds of the 2004 edition when he finished second to Joey Sindelar, and Jim Furyk duplicated that feat last year on the way to beating Trevor Immelman in a playoff. The last three winners of the Wachovia Championship -- Furyk, Vijay Singh and Sindelar -- have finished fourth or better in greens in regulation. Until his tie for 38th last year in the Wachovia Championship, Singh had a string of five straight top-10 finished in the state of North Carolina over three different tournaments. At Quail Hollow he's had three out of four finishes in the top 10. At the inaugural Wachovia Championship, David Toms stood on the 18th tee Sunday with a six-stroke lead but only won by two strokes after taking a quadruple bogey 8 on the finishing hole. He's missed the cut the last two years and is 13-over par in his last 73 holes at Quail Hollow. Toms deserves some slack. The last three years the home hole, 480 yards with a creek running down the left side, has been among the top 10 toughest holes on TOUR, and it gets tougher every year. The field averaged 4.363 strokes in 2004 (second all season), 4.445 in '05 (eighth) and 4.455 last year (eighth). |
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