Quail Hollow was 'meant to be here'

CHARLOTTE, N.C.- The Wachovia Championship's leaderboard is crowded with golf's biggest names, but the top star here is modestly ranked and plays with an old-fashioned style.

That star is the golf course, Quail Hollow, a gorgeous, 7,442-yard track lined with pines and oaks and 18 holes full of challenges without tricks.

After playing courses of exaggerated lengths or bulldozed contours, players from around the world have converged on the soft, rolling hills of Quail Hallow where there are only three water hazards but 62 bunkers.

The course rewards skill more than raw power or oddly curving putts that look like the green should have a windmill.
Kym Hougham, the tournament director, said the course's varying but obvious tests appeal to the game's best players.

"It's just solid golf. It's not tricked up. Every hole just talks to you, and you know what you need to do when you stand on the tee," said Hougham, a former University of Illinois golfer.

Highly manipulated layouts encourage flukey turns of fortune, and the best players increasingly choose to skip them.
Paul Azinger called Quail Hollow "a masterpiece," but he said too many Tour courses are forgeries that pros see through.

"I think the guys who run our tour ought to take into consideration that players show up on good golf courses. ... If they don't show up, you might want to look at the golf course," he said.

Tiger Woods has added the Wachovia Championship to his schedule because he likes the way the course plays.

"It's fair," Woods said, widening his eyes in mock amazement. "It's nice to play an old, traditional course where it looks like they just put a golf course on top of the land. They didn't bulldoze a whole bunch of different things to create a golf course. It was meant to be here."

In only its third year, the Wachovia Championship has drawn one of the strongest fields outside of a major. Among the world's 12 best players, only three are missing, and one of them—Ernie Els—said he is coming next year.

The Wachovia isn't the Masters, but it's poised to become a Carolina cousin. Not only does it draw the game's best players, but the Quail Hollow members—many of whom also are Augusta National members—are committed to providing service and perks that set this Southern stop apart.

The $6 million tournament purse pays $1,080,000 to the winner. The players' wives are offered free side trips. This year they went to Charleston. Every player is provided a Mercedes courtesy car. Even the caddies get valet parking, free golf at a partner course and the same food their bosses eat in the dining room.

British golfer Justin Rose called Quail Hollow "a classic course" at the center of a tournament that pays close attention to details.

"They seem to look at every single area that would make players' lives more comfortable and better, and they seem to deliver on all of it," he said.

Sergio Garcia, who has found his championship form at Quail Hollow, thinks the course ought to host a U.S. Open. He likes the atmosphere and the course.

"It's becoming one of the best tournaments of the Tour," he said. "It has nothing to envy from any other U.S. Open course."
The Wachovia Championship has quickly moved past its in-state rival, the Chrysler Classic of Greensboro, despite Greensboro's long ties to the PGA Tour.

The Chrysler Classic, an event with roots going back to 1938, struggled to draw high quality fields with early spring dates. In 2003, it switched to a fall date to coincide with the introduction of Chrysler's new lines of cars.

Mark Brazil, tournament director of the Chrysler Classic, doesn't dispute that the well-funded and sold-out Wachovia Championship now is No. 1 in North Carolina.

"It would be hard to argue, I guess. It's awfully good," he said. "It's got all the ingredients to be one of the best out there."
And the top ingredient, he said, is "an unbelievable golf course."

The praise for Quail Hollow wasn't always the case. When the Kemper Open was held here from 1969 to 1979, George Cobb's parkland-style course wasn't impressive. Jack Nicklaus said it was too easy for a Tour event. A masterful renovation by Tom Fazio reshaped the course built in 1961 into a classic gem.

Though the pros are impressed, Quail Hollow's understated appeal hasn't moved it up the Golf Digest ratings. It's ranked 17th among North Carolina's 25 best courses.

This week, though, golf's greatest players rank Quail Hollow with the fairest of them all.

"The field is unbelievably strong here because of the course," Azinger said. "That's just the way it is. The course is awesome. It's hard. It will beat you up, but it's fair."

Copyright 2005 by The News & Observer Pub. Co.