alhalla Golf Club outside of Louisville, host of the 2024 PGA Championship, from May 16-19, is a course defined by rich topographical variety and pointedly modernist architecture. Designed by Jack Nicklaus in the mid-1980s, the layout covers two distinct sections of land: a flood plain in the bend of a river known as Floyd’s Fork and hilly, upland terrain that plunges through hardwoods and former pastureland. The architecture is creative and stern, with defined targets and rewards for powerful driving. Artistic flourishes come in the form of fescue- carpeted mounding throughout the first nine and naturally occurring limestone used to bulwark greens, streams and water features. Previous PGA Championships at Valhalla – 1996, 2000 and 2014 – finished suspensefully on 18, a reachable par 5 with a split fairway second shot. Late-game theatrics are certain to be in store again, but to get there players will have to survive these equally distinctive holes.
34 GOLF DIGEST SOUTH AFRICA
MAY 2024
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