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TOUR NEWS<br />
Doral answers its critics<br />
When the world’s best players return to Trump National Doral for the WGC-Cadillac<br />
they’ll discover a venue that’s been tweaked to provide a much fairer test.<br />
Rewind 12 months and many of<br />
the world’s best golfers were<br />
extremely unhappy. “Do<br />
people like watching tour<br />
players lay up on par 4s?” asked Keegan<br />
Bradley, before Henrik Stenson stated:<br />
“It’s borderline stupid tough.”<br />
The object of their ire was the ‘Blue<br />
Monster’ course at the Trump National<br />
Doral. Up until 2013, the venue for the<br />
WGC-Cadillac Championship had been<br />
a bit of a soft touch. It then underwent a<br />
redesign to tighten it up, but during the<br />
2015 tournament the new routing<br />
proved to be far more diffcult for<br />
medium length hitters than it was for<br />
bombers. Cue a lopsided leaderboard<br />
that saw the longest hitter in the field<br />
win and four of the top five average over<br />
305 yards off the tee.<br />
“Length is an advantage here,”<br />
admitted winner Dustin Johnson. “There<br />
are a lot of carries where you need to hit<br />
it 300, 305 or 310 yards to get it over<br />
the fairway bunkers, so it definitely<br />
helps to be able to hit it that far.”<br />
This clear division left the tournament<br />
organisers facing a dilemma; stick by<br />
their original redesign and crown a<br />
bomber as the champion each year, or<br />
go back to the drawing board and make<br />
the course a fairer fight. Thankfully, they<br />
chose the latter option.<br />
“We always listen to comments that<br />
are thoughtful and over the last two<br />
years we’ve received a lot of feedback<br />
from average length hitters who felt like<br />
they were at a disadvantage,” reveals<br />
Doral’s course architect Gil Hanse. “At<br />
the time of the original redesign, we<br />
thought 300-yard carries were enough<br />
to deter all the players, but this didn’t<br />
prove to be the case. The game’s<br />
longest hitters can actually carry the ball<br />
315 yards, which gives them an<br />
advantage on a number of holes.”<br />
To combat this, Hanse and his team<br />
came up with a two-part strategy. Part<br />
one saw them give average hitters more<br />
room by filling in some fairway bunkers<br />
that were 280-300 yards from the tee.<br />
And part two saw them tighten up the<br />
course for longer hitters by adding some<br />
new bunkers in the 315 to 340-yard<br />
range. Now, everyone who tees it up<br />
should have a fair chance of winning.<br />
BOMBERS<br />
ADVANTAGE<br />
Longer hitters dominated in 2015.<br />
WGC-Cadillac<br />
leaderboard 2013<br />
Score<br />
Average<br />
driving<br />
distance<br />
1. Tiger Woods -19 293.2 (49)<br />
2. Steve Stricker -17 283.6 (124)<br />
T3. Sergio Garcia -14 291.0 (64)<br />
T3. Graeme McDowell -14 277.5 (<strong>16</strong>1)<br />
T3. Phil Mickelson -14 287.9 (93)<br />
T3. Adam Scott -14 297.8 (23)<br />
WGC-Cadillac<br />
leaderboard 2015<br />
Score<br />
Average<br />
driving<br />
distance<br />
1. Dustin Johnson -9 317.7 (1)<br />
2. JB Holmes -8 309.9 (5)<br />
3. Bubba Watson -7 315.2 (2)<br />
T4. Adam Scott -4 311.6 (4)<br />
T4. Henrik Stenson -4 296.4 (43)<br />
6. Louis Oosthuizen -3 298.8 (31)<br />
20 Golf World May 20<strong>16</strong>
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