Week after week on the PGA Tour can be a grind. As difficult as it may be for us non-professionals to comprehend many PGA Tour golfers slip into a routine of planes, hotels, golf…repeat – and repeat again. The airports look the same, the hotels change little and the golf courses blend into one huge perfectly manicured stretch of emerald green grass. This week things change on the PGA Tour as Trinity Forest makes its debut.
Trinity Forest, the creation of Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw is unlike any regular tour stop. It is billed as an “American links” course and will certainly offer golfers a new and different look from the “normal” tour stops. But as far as a links course, we know that can’t happen in the middle of Texas. But this course does introduce a different kind of course and we’ll settle on calling it a “links style” course.
The new home of the AT&T Byron Nelson is a flat, treeless layout with humps and hillocks that will send balls careening in directions that will surprise players.
If there are no trees why is it called Trinity Forest? You’d think there be some trees in a forest-but no, not here. The forest borders the course, hence the name and you rarely see a tree on a links (style) course anyway.
Players will be challenged by rolling fairways laden with bunkers, some centerline bunkers, firm and fast links like turf and huge greens with plenty of contours. And then of course there will be the ever present Texas wind. It won’t be a cool breeze from a firth but rather a hot Texas wind that will give the players fits.
Jordan Spieth is a member and he likes to call it “interesting.” He has scored as low as seven under par and as high as seven over and says this course requires plenty of focus.
It should be interesting to see a new style of play this week at Trinity Forest and there is sure to be some whining from some players. But in my book, the more links golf the better. Even if it’s only “links style.”
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