PGA Championship defending champion Martin Kaymer missed only two fairways when he came to town to play the Highlands Course at Atlanta Athletic Club earlier this summer. In both cases, his approach shots reached the greens only to bounce over into awaiting jeopardy.
This made Ken Mangum very happy. The longtime director of grounds and golf courses and his crew of the historic club in Johns Creek has spent the better part of the past five years trying to ensure that result.
We're now inside a month until the 2011 PGA Championship tees off August 8-14. Golf's fourth and final major returns to the site where it was last played in 2001 and David Toms won with a record low score of 15-under-par.
Not coincidentally, Mangum and the AAC membership have spent much of those 10 years figuring out ways to sharpen the fangs on their home track. And what they will unveil next month is something literally unseen anywhere else in the world.
The Highlands Course underwent the beginnings of a total renovation by famous world-renown architect Rees Jones in 2006. The greens were resurfaced in 2009.
So what Kaymer and the best golfers on the planet will encounter next month is a golf course comprised of three different grasses: "Diamond Zoysia" fairways, "Tifton 10″ Bermuda rough and "Champion Ultradwarf" Bermuda greens.
"We're the only golf course in the world with that combination," Mangum says proudly. "The players that have been here have said this may be the best hitting surface they've ever played off of."
Mangum and Jones made the somewhat bold decision to go away from the more commonly-used bent-grass greens, which prefer cooler weather, to these new strains of Bermuda that can tolerate Georgia's summer heat. They also have introduced new technologies that could make a Georgia Tech graduate blush. Revolutionary computer-monitored watering, fertilizing and drainage systems were installed that take chance out of the equation for greenskeepers.
"It's probably the most technologically advanced golf course we've played our championship on from an agronomy standpoint," said Kerry Haigh, managing director of championships for PGA of America. "We're very excited and appreciative of a club like the Atlanta Athletic Club, whose mission it is to be one of the best golf courses in the country. They're willing and prepared to do what they have to do."
The end result was probably best described recently by Ron Whitten, architecture editor and course-design critic for Golf Digest magazine.
"It's all in the grass," Whitten wrote. "Atlanta Athletic Clubs innovative switch beats the heat, plays firm and fast, is better for the environment and is opening up new areas of the country for future PGAs and U.S. Opens."
Meanwhile , AAC is doing everything in its power to make sure the world's best golfers are challenged. The golf course has been lengthened to 7,463 yards and will play to a par of 70. Lakes and ponds have been built and/or expanded. And bunkers have been moved from where they were in 2001 to 280 to 340 yards from the tees.
"At 240 to 270 the bunkers wouldn't have even been in play anymore," Mangum said. "That's how much the game has changed in that time."
Mangum said the goal is not necessarily to make their event a U.S. Open Junior. It's simply to make sure the world's best golfers get a true test while also providing some oohs-and-ahs for the golf-viewing public.
"My feeling on that is this is still entertainment," Magnum said. "You're putting the top 100 players in the world on your golf course. It's perfect; the greens are perfect; the fairways are perfect. And you're surprised they shoot good scores?
"I think we need to find a happy medium and I think that's what Kerry does with the setup. If the winning score's 5-over-par, I don't think that would be very exciting for people. For a major championship, 15-under might be a little too much. But I think this time we'll see somewhere in the 8 to 10 range."
At this point the heavy lifting is done. Or as Mangum puts it, "We're just polishing the stone now."
Monday, bleachers and corporate tents were being erected. Last week the course underwent one last aerification and 600 tons of sand was spread. Tonight, members' kids will hold a divot-filling party. Members are hitting off mats right now and will stop playing altogether two weeks prior to championship week.
"Looking out on the golf course it really is beginning to look good," Mangum said.
And more than a little bit intimidating as well.
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