CHARLOTTE, N.C. — It’s the great Quail Hollow debate: Players rave about it when they come every year, but for the course architecture heads and the peripheral golf community, the glass is very much half empty on this week’s PGA Championship venue.
So why is the divide so stark? What is it about a major coming to Quail Hollow that elicits such a visceral reaction? The answer is a bit like explaining reality television’s appeal.
“I guess I would say Quail Hollow is like a Kardashian,” six-time PGA Tour winner Hunter Mahan said. “It’s very modern, beautiful and well-kept. But it lacks a soul or character.”
Name another major championship venue that can be so sensibly compared to a family of meme-able celebrities who always seem to be the center of the pop culture news cycle. You cannot.
Quail Hollow is a staple on the PGA Tour for a reason. Founded by Jimmy Harris in 1959 on pasture land inherited by his mother, Quail Hollow gradually established itself as a place of note in the professional golf community because of its internal efforts to become one.
The expansive parkland layout was originally designed by golf course architect George Cobb, best known for building Augusta National’s par-3 course. Arnold Palmer helped modify four holes in the late 1980s, and soon after, Jimmy’s son, Johnny Harris — dubbed North Carolina’s “Ambassador of Golf” — took over as the president of Quail Hollow. That’s when the real work began. Tom Fazio came in to complete a full redesign of the routing in 1997.
By 2003, Quail Hollow was primed to begin hosting its annual PGA Tour event, originally called the Wachovia Championship, then the Wells Fargo, and now the Truist. Quail Hollow hosted its first major in 2017 — Justin Thomas won the PGA Championship — and a Presidents Cup in 2022.
“Arnold Palmer said to the founders, ‘If you build a golf course and you put up enough money, the best players in the world would play down Independence Boulevard,’” Johnny Harris said. “From the beginning, we always wanted to build a course that would attract the best players in the world.”
That it did.
Harris, an Augusta National member, has never been shy about his aspirations. Stepping onto the property, you’re immediately met with a sense of grandeur. A stately white clubhouse. Towering pines. Twisting fairways and gigantic bunkers. The course’s closing stretch, Nos. 16-18, was dubbed “The Green Mile” by esteemed golf journalist and Charlotte native Ron Green Jr. and played at 488 shots over par during the 2017 PGA Championship.
The Southern-style grounds do emulate a certain course in northeast Georgia. “Mr. Johnny Harris and the membership here have a vision to be the No. 1 course in the country behind only Augusta National,” Keith Wood, Quail Hollow’s Director of Green and Grounds told the Winston-Salem Journal when he was poached from Sedgefield’s staff in 2015.
It tends to be a common observation among those who visit Quail Hollow for the first time. NBC’s Johnson Wagner, a Charlotte resident and club member, used his Korn Ferry Tour credential to attend the Wachovia Championship the first year it was played.
“I immediately fell in love,” Johnson said. “It was May in Charlotte, the flowers are blooming and the course is overseeded. I was like, oh my gosh, this place is like Augusta.”
Since its inception, Quail Hollow has been nipped and tucked to Harris and the membership’s liking. There’s a sense that the place is constantly evolving and attempting to transform into one of the country’s premier major championship destinations.
A man-made stream was added to the 18th hole for increased drama on the closing hole in 1996. Fazio shaped the 16th into a drivable par-4 in 2013. Three years later, the final pairing in the Wells Fargo tournament wasn’t even in the clubhouse before the architecture team ripped apart the beginning stretch of the front nine. The greens have been redone multiple times, and not always to acclaim. In 2010, Phil Mickelson told the Charlotte Observer that the putting surfaces are some of the worst on the PGA Tour: “Even though they’re in immaculate shape, I would say that No. 18 would be the worst green we have on tour, except it’s not even the worst green on the golf course. Twelve is.”
In true Quail Hollow fashion, those surfaces have since been remodeled. The changes to the actual holes at Quail Hollow have all occurred side-by-side to expansions to the land itself, making room for hospitality tents, roads and other logistical necessities.
“It seems like every design change we make is to make it a better venue for the public and for infrastructure, rather than for the golf course,” Wagner said.
Despite the club’s ambitions, neither Golf Digest or Golf.com ranks the course among its top 100 in the United States. Yet, former PGA Tour pro and current practicing architect Davis Love III says it passes another test. “Is it going to be exciting on TV? Oh yeah. It’s going to be awesome.”
Jordan Spieth reportedly called the venue “Rory McIlroy Country Club” last week. That’s because McIlroy can overpower the majority of Quail Hollow’s holes by blasting it over the fairway bunkers with his driver. He’s won here four times, including by five shots last year. Harris is already considering making some changes in an attempt to counteract the prowess of the career Grand Slam winner and a select group of other pros who can bomb it into oblivion.
“Last year, before Wells Fargo, we flipped the bunkers on No. 16, the first hole of the Green Mile, which is the hardest three holes in golf. We were sure nobody’s gonna knock it over. Well, the first day of the tournament, Rory McIlroy flew it over the bunker, stood in the fairway, looked back at the camera and gave me a nod,” Harris said.
The result of all this tinkering is a property that is extremely well-suited for a major championship-sized crowd. But does that mean Quail Hollow is fit to provide a major championship-caliber test?
Last week, former U.S. Open champion Lucas Glover mentioned Quail Hollow as he spoke of the admirable Philly Cricket Club, a golden-age A.W. Tillinghast design that the PGA Tour visited for the first time last week as a fill-in venue for the Truist.
“(Tillinghast) gives you so many choices. At Quail Hollow, we’ll all be hitting it to pretty much the same place,” he said.
The same sentiment was shared by several players about last year’s PGA Championship venue, Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville, Ky. A course becomes instantly less interesting when players can hit it anywhere and still find success.
There’s a belief among architecture experts that Quail Hollow rewards aggressive play because the design is simply not demanding enough to place a premium on extreme accuracy. Plus, several inches of rainfall early this week in Charlotte might create softer-than-ideal conditions for what Harris and his membership envisioned. Scoring at Quail Hollow ranges from a borderline birdie fest to a stern, but fair 72 holes. McIlroy won the Wells Fargo at 17 under last year. Thomas won the 2017 PGA at 8 under. Kerry Haigh and the PGA of America’s championship team will set up the golf course with thick rough and strategic pins in hopes of making it play more like a major than a PGA Tour event.
“Quail Hollow is a good modern test, but it lacks the substance to be a great test,” said Andy Johnson of The Fried Egg, a popular independent golf media company specializing in architecture coverage. “Venues such as Augusta National demand players to not only be in the fairway but certain places in the fairway to take advantage of great scoring opportunities. At Quail Hollow, simply finding the fairway is the goal.”
That’s part of the reason why the pros seem to love it so much. It’s all right there in front of you. There’s ample data to be extracted from past tournaments. The holes are indeed difficult. But it’s familiar, and never cruel.
“The golf course is very challenging, but it’s not tricked up,” said Webb Simpson, a PGA Tour player and Quail Hollow member. “Guys love being challenged in the right way. Not tricked up, but real tough golf holes and Quail has a great variety of them.”
It doesn’t hurt that the course is known for supreme treatment of pros and caddies, from dry cleaning delivered at valet parking to five-star dining in the clubhouse. The players rave about Charlotte as a hub for professional golf fans, and many of them have close personal relationships with Harris, who is ever present during tournament weeks. The crowds will show out this week. Massive build-outs give spectators multiple options for viewing the closing stretch should the Green Mile deliver a finish anything like what we saw at last month’s Masters.
“Major championships go to places that have room for major championships,” Love said.
As an annual stop on the PGA Tour, Quail Hollow is top tier. As a big stage for a big golf tournament, it’s first-rate. As a major test? It leaves many wanting more.
“If we pick the top 20 architecturally significant places to host a PGA Championship, well yeah, maybe Quail Hollow doesn’t make that top 20,” Love said. “But if you pick the top 20 places to host a big tournament, it’s in the top 5.”
(Illustration: Will Tullos / The Athletic; top photo of Rory McIlroy: Andrew Redington / Getty Images)