PGA

HAVEN – “It’s a little bit different than 2004. Obviously it's a lot warmer, but the golf course is a little bit slower, a little bit softer,” said Tiger Woods, referring to Whistling Straits, site of this week’s PGA Championship.

Woods and several other golfers gave their impressions of the Straits Course during press conferences Tuesday after their practice rounds.

“I don't know what it was than what it was in 2004. A few changes but not too many,” Woods said.

“I think that it will probably play it a little bit longer than in 2004 just because of how much warmer it is and the wind direction. So it will be a great test.”

In 2004, the winds picked up during the final two rounds which made the Straits more demanding.

Phil Mickelson, the favorite to win the PGA Championship, is impressed with the course and excited about playing.

“Well, the golf course looks terrific and I think we're going to have a great week here. I'm looking forward to it and things have been good,” Mickelson said.

“I think it's a fun [course]. What's interesting about Whistling Straits for me is that it's a Scottish-looking course that plays like an American course. It doesn't play like a course in Scotland but yet it has all the aesthetics of it.

“And so that actually take a little bit of getting used to, the fact that you see the fescues and the sand, the dunes and the pot bunkers and so forth; and the openings in front and you think you want to run balls up,” Mickelson said.

“But you, it's just, it just doesn't work. It's too soft and the ball stops so you have to fly balls onto the green. So that takes as little getting used to, especially when we're just coming from the British Open.”

Graeme McDowell, who won this year’s U.S. Open, said the Straits is a “visually spectacular” golf course and likens it to some courses in the British Isles.

“I played 18 holes yesterday [Monday] and I was really trying to label this place. It's very difficult to do it,” said McDowell who hails from Northern Ireland.

“It's some kind of links golf course. It's a jacked-up links golf course. It's got some length and got some teeth to it. It's got a bit of Kingsbarns in there, a bit of Ballybunion and Portrush – everything rolled into one.

“Amazing that this golf course is man-made because it just looks like it's been there since the beginning of time. It's a visually stunning golf course,” McDowell said.

“You've got a lot of blind tee shots out there, nearly like a Royal County Down or something like that. The fairways are not very inviting at all. You don't really see much of your target area, so you've really got to know your way around and pick your spots and learn the golf course in your practice rounds.

There's a lot of rough out there, especially in the fairway areas. There's so many tee options around this golf course that practice rounds on this golf course are nearly irrelevant.

“The PGA could set the place up so much different. There's so many tee box options depending on what the wind is going to do but the golf course has got a lot of teeth,” he said.

Padraig Harrington thinks the Straits Course could play different than it did in the 2004 PGA Championship.

“Yeah, the golf course was certainly different yesterday [Monday] to 2004,” he said. “It was a beautiful day – very sunny, warm, hardly any wind, whereas I remember 2004 seemed to have a lot of strong crosswinds.

“Yesterday [Monday], it was a very manicured golf course, a very ordered golf course, and a nice, sunny day – maybe not what I’m going to expect during the four days of the tournament.

“I think in 2004, the course didn’t play long. If you hit the right shape on the wind and you hit the fairways, there was plenty of run on the fairways,” Harrington recalled.