PGA CHAMPIONSHIP PREVIEW
The Last Meal Players gorge on birdies before facing Quail Hollow’s Green Mile BY DEREK DUNCAN
first time Quail Hollow hosted the PGA (the club was also the site of the 2022 Presidents Cup). It was the most difficult course the Tour played that year beating Augusta National, Erin Hills and Royal Birkdale, the other major champion- ship venues, and the players collectively leaked an average of more than a stroke a day over the distance of the Green Mile. That scenario is likely to play out
sympathise with the analogy when try- ing to complete their rounds during the annual PGA Tour event at Quail Hol- low: their fate can often feel inevitable as strokes melt away on the unforgiving par-4/par-3/par-4 trilogy that can mea- sure a combined 1 161 metres with water hazards nestling against each green. The feeling only intensifies under the pressure of a major, as it did in 2017, the
THE FINAL THREE HOLES at Quail Hollow Club, site of the PGA Championship in
Charlotte, North Carolina (May 15-18), are notoriously known as the “Green Mile,” a reference to the colour of the floor that death row inmates walk on the way to the electric chair in the Ste- phen King novel and movie of the same name. Many PGA Tour professionals
PHOTOGRAPH BY CARLOS AMOEDO
86 GOLF DIGEST SOUTH AFRICA
MAY 2025
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