Nicklaus Toughens Honda Classic Course

The leaderboard after two rounds shows that Robert Allenby and Charlie Wi are tied at 5-under at the Honda Classic, being played at PGA National in Palm Beach Gardens. However, the real leader this week is Jack Nicklaus. He redesigned parts of PGA National with the sole purpose of making it harder for this generation of players. And he’s succeeded quite nicely.

Nicklaus took some heat last year when he made the Memorial Tournament course more difficult by making larger furrows in the bunkers, thus making them real hazards (as they were intended) and making it harder for the pros to get the ball close to the hole. Well he’s done similar things to PGA National and tried to make players think about their golf shots instead of just grabbing the driver and chasing it no matter where it went.

The 18th is a par-5 and is now a double-dogleg and players virtually have no ability to reach the green in two, and in fact the second shot is blind and you’ve got to hit a great second shot just to keep it in the fairway and not hit in the water hazard. The wind is a bonus for Nicklaus so far as it’s creating havoc for all the players and it’s keep scores down in the single-digits.

I hope that other course designers are taking note of what Nicklaus is doing with these courses by trying to tame what this generation of golfers can do to a defenseless layout.