Nice guy Molinari finishes first

The host venue for this week’s The American Express is one of the most unique on the PGA TOUR. PGA West’s Stadium Course was built by a World Golf Hall of Famer who added a California ethos to his groundbreaking style when he built this course out of the desert. Like its predecessor, the second Stadium Course also had a controversial debut. It was so hard when it was played 35 years ago that TOUR players petitioned to have it removed from the schedule. PGA West’s Stadium Course may not be as intimidating as it once was, but Dye’s trademark tricks still promote drama, especially on the course’s closing holes. “We’re just giving (the pros) the opportunities to hit great golf shots,” Dye once said. He viewed his penal designs as a canvas for the world’s best players to truly display their skills. The Stadium is one of three courses in use this week but the only one that will be played multiple times, including in Sunday’s final round. Here are 5 Things to Know about the Stadium Course at PGA West. 1. ‘THE HARDEST DAMN COURSE’ Dye was given simple instructions when tasked with building the Stadium Course at PGA West. “Build the hardest damn golf course in the world,” developers Ernie Vossler and Joe Walser told him. Dye had already shaped TPC Sawgrass’ Stadium Course out of a Florida swamp, earning him a reputation as an iconoclastic architect who built demanding layouts that required pinpoint precision. TPC Sawgrass debuted as the venue for THE PLAYERS in 1982, and its difficulty drove players mad. A short time later, Vossler and Walser asked Dye to enact a similar transformation on the opposite coast, creating another stadium design in the desert of California’s Coachella Valley. Dye accomplished his mission. PGA West’s Stadium Course was deemed the hardest in the nation when it opened. Its course rating of 77.1 was the highest ever given by the United States Golf Association. This reputation earned the Stadium Course the 1991 Ryder Cup, though that competition was later moved to another Dye design, Kiawah Island in South Carolina, because of concerns about hosting an intercontinental competition in the Pacific Time Zone. 2. TRANSFORMATION IN THE DESERT The Stadium Course is famous for its dramatic features, including steep slopes and penal hazards. The course belies the property’s original state as a flat parcel of desert. Dye wrote in his autobiography that the “featureless, barren acreage” was the “worst piece of land we ever started with.” The sandy soil allowed Dye to mold a memorable course from the ground. Working in the desert was like playing in a giant sandbox. Dye sculpted a course where water comes into play on nearly half the holes, and there’s more square footage of sand than putting surface. “Length alone would not be the ultimate test for the new course, but I believed strategic hazards, deep bunkers, difficult angles across fairways, slightly offset greens, parallel lakes and desert plants, when combined with cross-current winds, could provide the type of course Joe and Ernie expected,” Dye wrote in his autobiography. 3. THE REVOLT The Stadium Course’s debut as a TOUR venue in 1987 proved that Dye had done his job. Raymond Floyd called the course “spiteful” and “hateful.” Tom Watson said he was “sick and tired” of Dye’s radical designs. “It requires you to execute shots that no sane golfer should be expected to play,” Watson added. Famed Los Angeles Times columnist Jim Murray wrote that “you need a camel, a canoe, a priest and a tourniquet to get through it.” California native Al Geiberger once said playing PGA West was like working through the stages of grief. Expecting positive reviews from the TOUR pros, Dye instead was “lambasted with personal, cutting remarks to the effect that I had lost my mule-headed mind,” he wrote. It didn’t help that the first round was hit by cold weather that only made conditions more difficult. Things didn’t get much easier by Sunday. The 73.97 final-round scoring average was almost unheard of for the friendly setups of this pro-am tournament, where red numbers are the norm. It was only a matter of weeks before TOUR professionals petitioned to have the Stadium Course removed from the rotation of courses for the event that was then known as the Bob Hope Classic. Dye called the petition “absurd.” “The professionals forget that the whole idea of a Pete Dye golf course is to require players to hit a wide variety of shots,” Dye said. “I’ve always felt that a good player who’s playing well wants to play a difficult golf course because he knows the winner won’t be someone who can just out-putt him.” Lee Trevino, known as one of the best ball-strikers in the game’s history, also defended the course during the telecast of the 1987 Hope. “There’s been a lot of controversy about PGA West this week. Some pros say it stinks, it’s a monster, it’s unfair,” he said. “Well, I want to ask you, what makes a golf course unfair? Is it unfair because you have to hit the tee ball down the middle of the fairway and good iron shots into the green? Or is it fair because you can hit the ball all over the parking lot and make birdies? You be the judge of that, but if you ask me, if for the last 20 years we would’ve played golf courses like this one, maybe some of (you) that won a lot of golf tournaments wouldn’t have won as many.” It was nearly three decades before the Stadium Course returned to the TOUR schedule. While it continued to host tournaments like the Skins Game and Final Stage of Q-School, the course didn’t reappear on TOUR until the 2016 American Express. Advances in everything from agronomy to architecture, fitness to technology, have better equipped players to face challenges like those presented by the Stadium Course, which have become more commonplace. While still a challenge, the course is no longer considered controversial. “It says that the combination of technology and players has moved substantially over the course of 30 years,” said the famed architect Tom Doak, who started his career by working for Dye. “It also says that many architects have reacted to that and built very difficult courses, in reaction to what they saw on TV.” 4. FAULT LINES Like the first Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass, Dye built a memorable finishing stretch for the second edition. He called PGA West’s final three holes “maybe the most difficult finishing holes I’ve ever built.” “It’s hang-on-to-your-hat time when you turn back toward the clubhouse,” he said. Like TPC Sawgrass, PGA West finishes with a risk-reward par-5, island-green par-3 and water-lined par-4. The par-5 16th, named San Andreas (after the large fault that runs through the state), features a deep greenside bunker that Dye said may be “the deepest greenside bunker this side of Mars.” He intended to build an unforgettable bunker, but it developed a bit by accident. Dye told the bulldozer operator to keep digging until he hit water. “I don’t know if he thought I was kidding or not,” Dye wrote, “but his bulldozer finally found water at 22 feet, and we leveled it off at 20.” Vossler was skeptical about the deep sand trap. Before it was filled in with sand, he dumped a pile of sand at the bottom of the deep ditch and said Dye could keep the bunker only if he could hit a shot onto the green from down there. “Tossing me a sand wedge, Ernie challenged me: ‘If you can get it on the green from there, then the damn bunker’s all right with me,’” Dye wrote. “I used my flip-wrist sand wedge swing and safely elevated the ball up to the green site. … Just think of all the fun golfers would have missed if I’d left the ball in the … sand.” The bunker became famous when Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill couldn’t escape it during the 1987 Hope, finally opting to throw his ball out after several unsuccessful attempts to extricate it with a sand wedge. “There were those who thought the depth of the bunker was ridiculous and unfair,” Dye wrote. “Writers of note believed I had gone off the deep end.” 5. ISLAND TIME Dye believed a strong 17th hole is an important feature for any golf course. “Even though 18 is the finishing hole, I have focused more on the 17th because I always feel that it sets up the closing drama for 18,” he wrote. He created the world’s most famous 17th hole at TPC Sawgrass, but he wasn’t excited when asked by the developers and PGA TOUR Commissioner Deane Beman to replicate it in California. They believed an island green was a necessity if PGA West was going to earn its desired reputation for difficulty. “I was afraid that if I built another island green,” Dye wrote, “both holes would end up losing their uniqueness.” He acquiesced but made sure to add unique elements to the hole that would be named Alcatraz after the island prison in San Francisco. PGA West’s 17th would play from an elevated tee, unlike the flat version in Florida. Rocks, instead of railroad ties, lined Dye’s second island green, to help it fit in with the mountains that surround the course. PGA West’s island is larger than the original, as well, to accommodate a longer tee shot. PGA West’s 17th has a scorecard yardage of 165 yards, compared to 137 yards at TPC Sawgrass.

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POTOMAC, Maryland – It was a good day for a book and a bath, but not golf. And yet golf it was under a steady drizzle that sometimes gave way to a downpour in the second round of the Wells Fargo Championship at TPC Potomac at Avenel Farm. “When you have conditions like this,” said Jason Day (67, 10 under total), who will take a three shot lead into the weekend, “it’s really hard to commit to a shot because you’re going in there and you’re doing it kind of a lot quicker than your normal pre-shot routine, so you have to force yourself to hit the shot and trust that.” No, a normal pre-shot routine does not include the intricate player-caddie umbrella dance that was the norm Friday. With more rain plus wind and unseasonably cold temperatures forecast for the weekend, the tournament is turning into a mind game, even for the leaders. Luke List shot 66 and called it “a testament to being able to keep my emotions in check.” The day’s biggest winner? That would be Keegan Bradley, who shot the best round (65) in the slop. It should be noted that he’s also the guy who shot a remarkable 71 – which would have been a 69 if not for an odd penalty – in howling wind at THE PLAYERS Championship in March. Bradley, who is five back heading into the weekend, may be the only guy cheering for awful weather. Max Homa (66, solo second, three back) persevered. When not counterpunching TPC Potomac, he and Day busied themselves with a debate about whether it was better to keep wearing a waterlogged cap or abandon it. Day went with the latter option, preventing drip distraction (it was a thing) as he stood over putts. They also got caught up in a fantasy that involved being dry. Warm. Somewhere else. “Jason and I have been talking about it for 2 1/2 hours that we can’t wait to be done,” Homa said. Out on the course, Nick Watney, last to hit at the 11th hole, frantically searched his bag for a dry glove. “Sorry guys,” he said, before piping his tee shot through the soup and into the fairway. Balls squirted off clubs and into hazards. Players went from being in contention to having a free weekend. Wesley Bryan went 66-78, and yet that was nowhere close to the day’s worst round. James Hahn said he tried to think of himself as a kid again – a kid willing to play in anything. “I grew up in this stuff,” said Hahn (68), who is tied with List and four off the lead. “This is kind of the reason why I left California is because of weather like this. It seemed like the year that I left, it was raining 100 days out of the year and so I would practice in this every day. I feel comfortable. “It kind of brings me back to the good old days,” continued Hahn, who has yet to make a bogey, “when I was young and carefree and just wanted to go out and play golf.” Chad Ramey tried to embrace the challenge, hopeful that it might help. It seemed to as Ramey, winner of the Corales Puntacana Championship in March, shot 66 to reach 5 under. The biggest silver lining was that the course remained playable. The ball was flying considerably shorter, and it was hard to hold onto grips, but at the start of the day Homa told his caddie, Joe Greiner, not to be shocked if they only got in about eight holes. In that respect, he was surprised. Pleasantly surprised? Well, no. Pleasant wasn’t really the right word on this day. In any event, they got in 18. They’ll get in 36 more this weekend. Someone will win, and he will feel a whole lot warmer inside as he raises the trophy for the cameras. A book and a bath can wait.

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Round 3 of the Hewlett Packard Enterprise Houston Open takes place Saturday from Memorial Park Golf Course. Martin Trainer leads by one over Kevin Tway with Jason Kokrak, Kramer Hickok and Scottie Scheffler in contention. Here’s everything you need to know to follow the action. Leaderboard Tee times HOW TO FOLLOW Television: Thursday-Sunday, 1 p.m.-4 p.m. ET (Golf Channel). Radio: Thursday-Friday, 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturday 1 p.m.- 6 p.m. ET or the conclusion of play. Sunday, 11 a.m.-4 p.m. (PGA TOUR Radio on SiriusXM and PGATOUR.com/liveaudio). TOURCast: Get shot-by-shot info in real time with shot tracks and video with TOURCast. TOUR Pulse: Get the PGA TOUR app to utilize TOUR Pulse, which provides users the ability to experience a mix of content, such as video highlights, written hole summaries and stat graphics on every player after every hole they complete. MUST READS Martin Trainer leads by one at Hewlett Packard Enterprise Houston Open Scottie Scheffler gets mad, sets course record in Houston Bryson DeChambeau using new irons created with 3D printer

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