RADIO
The PGA Tour has moved onto the second leg of the FedEx Cup Playoffs and this year the BMW Championship will feature a brand new golf course, Castle Pines Golf Club. Crafted through the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, Castle Pines will play at 6,400 feet above sea level at it's highest point and will officially be the longest golf course in PGA Tour history at 8,130 yards.
The field size has been trimmed down to the top 50 players in the FedEx Cup rankings and this week will once again be a no-cut style tournament. The Top 30 players after this week will advance to next weeks Tour Championship at Eastlake. Castle Pines should present a unique challenge to players who rarely play with this kind of elevation variables and the Jack Nicklaus design will undoubtedly provide some picturesque views on TV.
My goal is to use this piece to hopefully highlight a few different angles and elements that may be less spoken about to provide some value in this course preview. I'm hopeful that you can utilize this to get your research started with a proper understanding of how the golf course should affect which player attributes are the most important for success. Let's dig into Castle Pines!
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An Introduction to Castle Pines
Castle Pines Golf Club was established in 1981, tucked into the mountains of Castle Rock, Colorado, and was built as a passion project by oil-titan Jack Vickers. He hired Jack Nicklaus to design a prestigious 18-hole golf course that utilized the unbelievable terrain to create a stunning golf course. The course features massive elevation changes and weaves through dense forests, making each hole feel independent.
Castle Pines first hosted a PGA Tour event in 1986, The International, which held it's place on the Tour schedule for 20 years. That is until the BMW Championship decided to move it's tournament West this year and selected Castle Pines as the destination for the second leg of the FedEx Cup Playoffs.
The course has been through a couple of renovations in recent years that will have it play longer and much differently than we last saw it in 2006. Castle Pines is for the elite of the elite. The dues are not disclosed and membership is by invite only. We often gripe about the monotony of the PGA Tour schedule and want to see some different. Well, Castle Pines is definitely different than we are used to!
The intention when Vickers commissioned Jack Nicklaus for the architecture was to incorporate elements of Augusta National but with the dramatic landscape of the Rocky Mountains rather than steep Georgia pines. Those are high hopes, but I think we can expect to a golf course in immaculate shape that is well-prepared to once again host a PGA Tour event.
Some notes on Castle Pines Golf COurse:
- We are going to see some drives fly close to 400 yards on two of these par 5s --> long, but significant down hill tee shots --> ball flies 10% further at mile-high altitude
- This course reminds me of a commercialized (cart paths and… pic.twitter.com/8L7pdWUrgU
— Byron Lindeque (@TheModelManiac) August 19, 2024
Scorecard:
Course Specs
Let's get this out of the way to start. The highest point on the golf course is 6,400 feet above sea level. What does that do the golf ball? In its simplest form, it makes it fly farther, and often times straighter. The low density of the air should add about 30-40 yards to most drives and also minimizes the effect that spin has on curving the golf ball as well. Get ready for golf balls to go extraordinarily far!
Rory just hit a ball out of the range. Castle Pines officials politely asked him to avoid area houses... pic.twitter.com/AI0lL7SdOb
— Arran Andersen (@arranandersen) August 20, 2024
After doing the math and making roughly a 7.1% altitude adjustment per hole, I have the golf course set to effectively play at 7,450 yards. That's not that long for a Par 72, and it's made even shorter when you consider many tee shots play dramatically downhill from a perched-up tee box. The fairways average 30 yards in width.
When I did the altitude-adjusted yardages for each hole, I had nine par 4's that are going to effectively play between 400-465 yards. It's going to leave players with an above-average number of approach shots between 100-160 yards which could be a sneaky range that many overlook. Two of the par 5's will still play over 600 yards, which leads me to believe some may end up laying up, providing more shots from that 100-150 bucket.
The GCSAA fact sheet says there are 10 holes with water in play, but I can't imagine that we see nearly the same amount of water balls as TPC Southwind. It's in play, but should not impact scoring as much and we may see half as many penalty strokes. The greens, tee boxes, and fairways are all a blend of Bentgrass and Poa Annua, while the rough is set to be 4 inch high Kentucky Bluegrass.
Another thing about the course that is noteworthy is the course superintendent Scott Pavalko. He's new to Castle Pines but formerly worked at Muirfield Village and Cog Hill which hosted 8 memorial tournaments and the 2011 BMW Championship during his time. He's familiar with how to set up a golf course, and a tough one at that.
Statistical Considerations
For the first time in weeks, the pendulum has swung more onto the importance of distance over accuracy off the tee. I'm looking at Carry Distance as I believe it can present an extreme advantage to players, assuming they can keep the ball within the confines of the fairway. The greens are not overly big and should play firm based on what I have read, so the ability to bomb it and then have a wedge into some of these greens will be a nice advantage.
Next up I have that important approach proximity bucket of 100-165 yards that I spoke about in the Course Specs section. It's a range that could go slightly overlooked by those to lazy to do the math which may think that long irons are the most important thing. Ignore the 8,130 yards, the pros are still going to hitting wedges and short irons into a number of holes at Castle Pines.
The Top 10 players in Strokes-gained: Approach from that range over the last 30 rounds are:
- Tommy Fleetwood
- Aaron Rai
- Corey Conners
- Scottie Scheffler
- Sungjae Im
- Eric Cole
- Taylor Pendrith
- Rory McIlroy
- Patrick Cantlay
- Brian Harman
Since we have zero course history for players at Castle Pines, I also want to look at performance on what I deem to be decent comp courses. Here are the courses that I think fall into a similar mold to pull data from; Augusta National, Tahoe Mountain Club, Valhalla, TPC Summerlin, Kapalua, and Muirfield Village.
Lastly, at this point in the season, I want to know how players are playing RIGHT NOW. If you are looking at stats from the last 36 rounds, you could be going back to early summer for a number of players in the field as schedules have been limited through the Major season. I'm looking at strokes gained T2G and Total in the last 16 rounds played to get a baseline of current incoming form.
The Good Good x Wyndham Clark Major is live!
Watch it here👇https://t.co/ieKTGIyxIM pic.twitter.com/oqeA33Zsdm
— Good Good Golf (@goodgood_golf) August 10, 2024
Good luck and enjoy the 2024 BMW Championship!
