On Par – All about golf in Australia

This weekends US PGA Championship returns to Whistling Straits Golf Club near Sheboygan, Wisconsin. The course is a Pete Dye design modelled on Scottish Links layouts, and is remarkable for its 967 bunkers scattered across the course. Yep, thats no typo, 967 bunkers, the satellite view of the course looks like a moon landscape with pot and waste bunkers as far as the eye can see. However this was not Mornington Peninsula like natural landscape, over 800,000 cubic feet of dirt and sand was dumped on the site to create the course!

Whilst the pro’s pinpoint accuracy should remove about 957 bunkers from the equation, if the wind picks up it could get nasty. And this is the type of course that could reduce the club golfer into a sobbing feotal position with nightmares of being eaten by sand monsters.

Enough sand to wear out the grooves on the sand wedge

Vijay Singh won here in 2004, and the field is wide open. Tigers woes a well documented, though he seems to find an extra something in Majors. Lefty Phil should be the one the beat, and whilst he missed an opportunity last week to take the World #1 title from Woods, this could be the week. Would love to see Adam Scott up on top of the leaderboard coming into Sunday. Will the links style suit an Aussie win?

The 17th is the signature hole at Whistling Straits, named the “Pinched Nerve”