Championship golf courses will, naturally, possess varying design characteristics – both environmentally and schematically – that make them unique challenges. Plus, they all share a common trait—making the game’s best players feel varying degrees of discomfort. Quail Hollow Club easily fits the bill.
“Big, hard and tough, it exposes your weaknesses and really makes you feel uncomfortable,” says 2015 PGA Champion Jason Day in assessing the examination that awaits the 156-man field at the 107th PGA Championship in North Carolina. “You better have every part of your game clicking, especially when it’s set up for a major championship, because that sense of constant pressure is heightened. It doesn’t give you anything.”
Quail Hollow, the Tom Fazio-fortified gem in southeast Charlotte, hosts its second PGA Championship the week of May 12–18, and it’s likely to have a different feel than the first one contested eight years ago during the month of August. The greens will be different, the grasses different and the weather conditions different – primarily in the form of more variable winds.
That’s not to say there won’t be elements of familiarity for many players in the field; Quail Hollow has been hosting a PGA TOUR event in May since 2003 (most recently the Wells Fargo Championship since 2011).
Rory McIlroy certainly is counting on that. The two-time winner of the Wanamaker Trophy, in 2012 and 2014, has collected four titles at Quail Hollow Club, including his first PGA TOUR win in 2010 at the Quail Hollow Championship and his fourth as recently as the 2024 Wells Fargo. In between, the four-time major winner from Northern Ireland dismantled the layout in 2015 with a 21-under-par 267 aggregate score featuring a course-record 61 in the third round of the Wells Fargo.
“I’m definitely looking forward to the prospect of playing there in May, having it be somewhat similar to what we have faced before,” says McIlroy, who finished tied for 22nd in the 2017 PGA Championship while battling back spasms. “At the same time, you never want to go in with too many expectations. We all know the golf course, so it will be about execution.”
Designed originally by George Cobb, Quail Hollow Club opened in 1961 as a par-72 course measuring up to 7,060 yards. The land upon which the tree-lined parkland course sits was part of one of the largest dairy farms in the state and belonged to Cameron Morrison, a former North Carolina governor. James J. Harris, Morrison’s son-in-law, used to hunt quail on the rolling property, but in 1959 he convened a group of 20 like-minded men to start their own private golf club on it.
With the help of a close friend with considerable influence in the game, Harris was able to bring a PGA TOUR event to his club in 1969. His friend was Arnold Palmer, and the Kemper Open had an 11-year run at Quail Hollow before it moved to Washington, D.C. Palmer promptly filled the void in the early 1980s with a senior event, the World Seniors Invitational, that ran nearly a decade.
In the midst of that run, in 1985, Palmer modified the layout, but Johnny Harris, successor to his father as president of the club, enlisted the help of Fazio to execute a more significant overhaul in 1997. In anticipation of the PGA TOUR’s return in 2003 with the inaugural Wachovia Championship, Fazio further strengthened it. Fred Couples, among others, referred to the challenging design, now measuring 7,396 yards, as resembling a U.S. Open. It would not be the last time.
Through the years, winners of the event include not only include McIlroy and Day, but Tiger Woods, Vijay Singh, Jim Furyk and David Toms.
Quail Hollow today can play up to 7,800 yards, but the official yardage this year from the middle of the designated teeing grounds is 7,626 yards. That’s merely a pitch shot longer than the 7,600 yards that confronted the field in 2017 for the 99th PGA Championship.
After creating a new 16th hole edging the club’s 15-acre lake in 2013, Fazio returned yet again in 2016 for a white-knuckle upgrade that had some PGA of America officials a bit nervous, being so close to the ’17 Championship. Three crews worked around the clock to complete the project in 89 days.