An Intimate Look at Quail Hollow

New York Times

14-05-2025

Webb Simpson has what many recreational golfers dream of.
Simpson — who won the U.S. Open in 2012 and Players Championship in 2018, and has played on multiple Ryder and Presidents Cup squads — can walk out his back door and be on the seventh hole of the Quail Hollow Club, the host of this week's P.G.A. Championship and an annual tour stop on the PGA Tour.
Better still, Simpson, who has five children, can hop in his golf cart like any golf dad and take his children around the course at dusk to chip and putt. He admitted, 'I might owe the club a cart fee or two.'
Major golf championships have long gone to storied, private clubs — think Baltusrol, Oakmont, Oak Hill and Winged Foot. More recently, they have ended up at challenging public or resort courses like TPC Harding Park, Bethpage Black and Kiawah Island.
But it's rare that these events go to a top-notch private club that also has members living around its perimeter, let alone touring pros who can walk out their doors and tee up.
Yet this is the third time that the club has hosted a major international competition: It put on its first P.G.A. Championship in 2017 (won by Justin Thomas) and a Presidents Cup in 2022.
Simpson — whose best professional finish at his home club was a tie for second in 2015 at the Wells Fargo Championship, seven shots behind the winner and this week's favorite, Rory McIlroy — appreciates what he has.
'It's an incredible place to live,' Simpson said. 'I'm the only pro golfer who has a regular PGA Tour event, a Presidents Cup event and a major championship at his home course. It's an awesome place.'
The history of Quail Hollow is intertwined with the growth of Charlotte, N.C., and its emergence as a major economic center in the southeastern United States.
Founded in 1960, the club was formed in response to overcrowding at Charlotte Country Club, as more people moved to the city.
'In the 1950s, my dad was a member of Augusta National and Seminole, and he loved the game,' said Johnny Harris, the club's president, about his father, James, its founder. 'He'd been sitting at the scorer's table in 1958 at the Masters when Arnold Palmer turned in his scorecard. He got to know Arnold and asked him to talk to 20 men about starting a club. They asked George Cobb, who designed the par-3 course at Augusta, to design the course.'
It was an auspicious start. 'One of the big questions that came up was, 'Can we build a course good enough for the pros to play?'' Harris said. 'Arnold said they'll play down Independence Boulevard [a main street in the city], if you pay him enough money.'
The course opened in 1961, and the clubhouse in 1967. Two years later, Quail Hollow began hosting the annual Kemper Open, which returned for the next decade before the club became home to the World Series Invitational through the 1980s.
During the 1990s, when the course wasn't hosting a regular professional event, the club began to rethink the original design of the course and explore how it could be updated to keep pace with the modern game.
The club hired Tom Fazio, a top architect who has done work at Augusta National, to renovate Quail Hollow.
'There seemed to always be interest in having a tournament,' Harris said. 'We redid the course with Fazio to be competitive.'
Harris added: 'But Tom's the one who talked us into being a little more open to how all the members play, not just the pros. We have tees from Quail 5 all the way back to Quail 1 tees, which the pros will play this week.'
So how does Quail Hollow change depending on who is playing it? After all, it's only closed to regular members for two weeks each year — one week for maintenance and the other for a PGA Tour event now called the Truist Championship that has been held there since 2003.
The biggest difference between the pro's week and a regular week for members is not the length of the course but the height of the rough that the P.G.A. of America has grown higher than usual.
Kerry Haigh, chief championship officer of the P.G.A. of America, is in charge of the setup this week. 'We'll have the fairways rolling fast, and that tends to make the ball go into the rough,' Harris said. 'That's the protection of the golf course. The people who drive the ball straight will do well.'
The course is set up with five sets of tees, each of which changes the length of the course. The first set, called One Birds, are for the pros, and they stretch the course to some 7,600 yards. At times, that's even too much for some pros. Simpson said that in the winter — when it's cold and the ball isn't flying as far — he plays the Two Birds, which are just over 7,000 yards.
'It's actually really fun,' Simpson said. 'I love going up to the Two Birds. I play the Three Birds with a friend who is a plus-2 handicap. I drive it 30 yards past him. But it's fun to see how different the course plays.' The Three Birds are 6,400 yards. Harris said he enjoys the Four Birds, which are 5,800 yards.
The only tournament where the course was radically different from what the members played was the 2022 Presidents Cup. Quail Hollow's last three holes, known as the Green Mile, have decided many tournaments. In head-to-head competition, such as at a Presidents Cup, matches tend to be over before holes 16, 17 and 18. So the club switched the routing and put the finishing holes in at 10, 11 and 12.
There are challenges for the members. One of them is the different types of grass planted to suit different weather, a process called overseeding. For professional tournaments in May, the course gets overseeded with rye grass; by the hot summer months, it's back to Bermuda grass. 'The challenges come in the transitions,' said Tom Delozier, general manager of the club.
The other is the inconvenience of the build-out to host a tournament, with its hospitality tents and grandstands. Delozier said that after nearly four dozen professional events, the club had built pathways and roads through and around the property, which get hidden by the topography. These allow for easier setup and clean up.
(One thing surely keeps complaints low: the club has brought in tens of millions of dollars from tournaments, which allows it to do capital improvements without assessing its 350 or so members.)
Simpson, who did not qualify for this year's P.G.A. Championship, said that when he first played Quail Hollow as a member in a professional tournament in 2011, he had to relearn some of the putts because the greens were so much faster.
But he said knowing the tendencies of each hole is an advantage. Putts from the front of the No. 3 green don't break as much. And bailing out right on 18 may seem better than flirting with the creek on the left, but it can be hard.
Given all his local knowledge, Simpson let it be known to his fellow pros that he's around this week. 'I jokingly said if anyone needs a caddie, I can be had for the right price.'
He knows how to get quickly from his backyard to the first tee.