Tournament: The Wells Fargo Championship
Course: Eagle Point Golf Club (Wilmington, North Carolina)
Course Stats: 7,170 Yards, Par 72
Course Architect: Tom Fazio: Opened for play in May of 2000, making it one of the more recent designs to land a PGA Tour event.
Course Credits: Voted 7th Best New Private Course by Golf Digest (2001). Ranked 5th Best Golf Course in North Carolina by Golf Digest (2007). Perennially ranked as a Top 100 course by major golf publications for the last three years.
Course Features: With the PGA Championship coming to Quail Hollow in 2017, The Wells Fargo Championship has taken up new residency at Eagle Point Golf Club in Wilmington, North Carolina. The first thing you need to know about Eagle Point is that it is much more than just a substitute for Quail Hollow, it is a legitimate Tour venue that will have players raving about it by weeks end. In an interview with PGATour.com, Webb Simpson likened the course to Augusta National, specifically referring to its lush turf and snow-white bunkers that offer a fantastic contrast of colors for those of us watching in HD this week. Additionally, Eagle Point has a top notch practice facility, its own Par 3 course and the type of clubhouse atmosphere and amenities that make you think you were transplanted to Augusta, if only for a hot minute. Eagle Point even went so far as to hire Marsh Benson to help get the course ready for this week. Benson was previously the Superintendent at Augusta National for 27 years and has brought a gifted eye of landscape design that will help Eagle Point take full advantage of their week in the spotlight.
For a course that is set on the flat coastline of North Carolina and less than a mile from the Atlantic Ocean, Eagle Point is much hillier than you might expect. It also features enough elevation changes to make the course completely unique in its features relative to neighboring courses in the Carolinas. The result is a harmonic design that blends the feel of North Carolina Sandhills with the aesthetic beauty of South Carolina Low Country. This means towering Carolina Pine and Elm Trees that are home to both Osprey and Bald Eagles, as well as meandering creeks and large water hazards that blend in seamlessly with sandy native areas. If you have ever played golf in the Carolinas, chances are you recognize both design templates, but to be able to combine the strategic elements of say a Pinehurst with the landscape beauty of Harbour Town, is an incredible feat that we may never see duplicated. There just isn’t enough high quality real estate available, especially when you consider the fact that Eagle Point sits on 229 acres. With so many different feature sets going on at Eagle Point, it would be easy (and shortsighted) to think it is contrived, but that is the furthest thing from the truth. Fazio has created a shot-makers golf course that will test every club in the bag and will require players to flight their ball both low and high depending on the hole. I don’t know if one type of skillset has an edge over another, but I know this…I will be leaning heavily on ball-strikers who have elite distance control.
One of the bigger storylines of this week will be the relative unfamiliarity that players have with Eagle Point, as a large majority of them will be seeing the course for the first time. This means that they will not have much of an opportunity to see various wind conditions and pin placements before Thursday’s first round, so the chance of big numbers popping up is certainly in play. This is why I am leaning toward the top echelon of ball-strikers. The one player who has seen this course more than 150 times is Webb Simpson, who is also a member of Quail Hollow and has had success at the Wells Fargo in previous years. He is a Carolina resident and attended Wake Forest, so he will certainly be the crowd favorite this week.
Course Grass: Bermuda (Fairways, Tees and Rough) Champion Bermuda (Greens) Rye (over seeded)
Key Statistics: Driving Accuracy, Proximity to Hole, Strokes Gained: Approach the Green, Strokes Gained: Putting, Greens in Regulation Percentage, Bogey Avoidance, Bounce Back Percentage
