Chris Gotterup won the inaugural ONEflight Myrtle Beach Classic last year with a 22-under-par 262 at The Dunes Golf and Beach Club.
What might the winning score be this week?
The course will play similarly to last year, with a couple tweaks to greens and rough that might make it play a little more difficult.
Missing fairways will be more penal than it was for both last year’s PGA Tour event and the collegiate General Hackler Championship two months ago, when Auburn torched the course for a 33-under team total with three players at 8 under or better in three rounds, including champion Brendan Valdes at 12 under.
“The course is in really good shape,” said Dunes Club director of agronomy and facilities Steve Hamilton. “Our overseeded rough, which is basically what we do differently with the tournament than normal, is really good. It’s much better than last year, it’s much more consistent and dense.”
The rough was cut to 2 1/2 inches late last week at the request of PGA Tour officials, which is up from 2 inches last year, and it has grown since. Hamilton said tour officials will monitor its height and will make a decision on whether to cut it or allow it to grow all week to make the course even more challenging by the weekend.
The course was shut down for a full week prior to Monday’s pro-am.
“The course condition is superb,” Hamilton said. “For us to be able to get in and work on it and allow it to breathe and not have cart traffic and all that kind of stuff allows us to do that. It has a huge impact on the golf course, even just a week.
“It allows us to really put our best foot forward when we’re presenting the golf course, not just for the players but everyone who comes out here, spectators and for television. It’s a big deal.”
The greens are not overseeded, so players are putting on Champion Bermudagrass that has come out of winter dormancy.
“I think we’ve proven to them our putting greens are really good this time of year without overseeding,” Hamilton said.
Hamilton said his crew has attempted to make them a bit more firm compared to last year with some different agronomy practices.
“If there’s one thing I wanted to see if we could do a little bit better from last year to this year was just firmness for the tournament,” Hamilton said. “I just think that’s much more indicative of championship golf. We’re going to be able to compare those results with what we had last year, to see if it actually works or not.”
Some holes on the Robert Trent Jones design were altered prior to the hosting of the inaugural Myrtle Beach Classic to make the course a 7,347-yard par-71 for the event, and Hamilton said no other structural changes were made over the past year.
“The tour was more than happy with what was produced last year,” Hamilton said.
Weather can be a defining variable on how low the players will go.
While rain this week might stimulate growth of the rough, it would also soften the greens and make getting balls closer to the hole on approach shots easier.
“We’re behind in rainfall, but we absolutely don’t want it to come during the tournament,” Hamilton said. “We’re okay with no rain. We can control the moisture in the areas we need to.
“. . . It looks like we may have a chance of having some weather throughout the tournament. If that comes through you kind of have to throw your hands up in the air a little bit. You lose some of the control over the firmness and things like that.”
Hamilton said greens are running at approximately 12 on the Stimpmeter, which is similar to last year’s speeds, and tour officials will be careful not to get them too fast on the fairly undulating putting surfaces.
“I think a lot of people’s misconceptions are these guys are just going to make the greens as fast as they possibly can. They don’t do that at all,” Hamilton said. “They put a range out there. What happens is you lose the ability to put pins in certain locations. You can’t have really good cuppable areas on a green when you have certain speeds, you lose your ability to have some really challenging pins. It’s not the speed of the green that’s challenging, it’s where [the pin] is located.”
Though Gotterup won at 22 under, he won by six shots, so everyone else in the field was at 16 under or higher.
“I think people thought the (under par) number last year was going to be upper 20s to 30, and they were really surprised we had one guy in the 20s and everyone else in the teens or lower,” Hamilton said. “We’re not trying to protect par, I don’t think (tour officials) are worried about that at all. I think they just want it to be a true test of golf and for it to be fair.”
Hamilton is working with a much larger maintenance crew than normal for the tournament, as his staff of 20-25 has expanded to 75-80 with the addition of volunteers from other courses as well as a large contingent of faculty, alumni and primarily students from Horry-Georgetown Technical College’s Golf & Sports Turf Management program. Each morning and afternoon shift has between 50 and 60 workers, Hamilton said.
“We have a lot more resources when it comes to manpower with our volunteer team,” Hamilton said. “We’re able to use that manpower to just be able to fine-tune things, and we can spend the time to do those types of things.”
