Senior PGA Championship Field Sees Renovated Congressional

The Senior PGA Championship visits famed Congressional Country Club’s blue course this week, near Washington, D.C., on a memorable property that has previously hosted six major championships. These include the 1964 U.S. Open (Ken Venturi), 1976 PGA Championship (Dave Stockton), 1995 U.S. Senior Open (Tom Weiskopf), 1997 U.S. Open (Ernie Els), 2011 U.S. Open (Rory McIlroy), and 2022 KPMG Women’s PGA Championship (In Gee Chun).

Only one of those majors have been played on the course in its current form. In 2020, architect Andrew Green redesigned Congressional and removed over a thousand trees, allowing for visuals of the iconic clubhouse on all eighteen holes. For the PGA Tour Champions players walking around this week, the blue course they remember is something completely different.

Lee Westwood, who finished T3 in the 2011 U.S. Open at Congressional, noticed the changes 14 years later.

“It feels a lot different, obviously, I’ve got good memories from playing in the U.S. Open,” Westwood said on Tuesday.
He thought it played a lot firmer than when he’d seen it in both 1997, when he also finished in the top 20 (T19) in a U.S. Open, and also from the 2011 U.S. Open.

“It’s somewhere that I like coming back to, it’s got a good feel about it, and I like the changes as well. It plays really challenging. And I like how open it plays. It feels like you can see everything out there.”

Westwood adds that the open feel from the removal of so many trees gives it a similar feel as you look across the property to Oakmont Country Club. The playability of the course in Westwood’s eye lends itself to one of his career-long strengths: precise iron play.

“You’ve certainly got to control your ball flight and have some good distance control into some of these greens because they’re really severe and there are some places on them that you really don’t want to be,” Westwood said.

For Harrison Frazar, who last set foot on property at Congressional since 2011 when he tied for 30th at the U.S. Open, the changes to the course hit him even while he was driving into the premises in his car this week.

“Even when you drive through the entrance of the property, it’s a little bit of a shock. I didn’t realize this whole time that the range was that close, and I didn’t realize the stunning views as you drive past it and see some of the course open up,” Frazar said on Tuesday.

Frazar sees a lot of bite to the course, but none more so than on the very large and undulating greens.

“The green complexes are difficult. The ball is really bouncy at times, and it’s hard to control your ball and even learning the right places for a good lag putt around them,” Frazar said. "But when you get really firm conditions like what I saw on Monday, the very firm and fast greens, this championship could be won with a score that’s well over par, honestly. However, I think they’re going to shorten it, I think they’re going to put some holes up so they can put wedges in our hands to get at some of these pin locations.”

The weather forecast is calling for rain all day on Wednesday, so that will impact the fast conditions Frazar and others have seen both Monday and Tuesday.

“The rain will soften it when it comes, but wow, it’s a heck of a venue out there," Frazar said. "These green complexes are incredible to play on.”

For Paul Stankowski, who played here 28 years ago and tied for nineteenth with Westwood in that U.S. Open, the blue course brings a gravity and feel that is all you want in a Senior PGA Championship.

“This is big-time major championship golf right here. It’s difficult out there. The greens have a lot going on. There’s a lot of fire in these holes, a lot of bite if you’re not in position,” Stankowski said. “This rough is only 2-3 inches tall, but it’s aggressive, it’s like Hulk Hogan down there grabbing onto your golf club.”

For David Toms, processing the different look to Congressional’s blue course continued after his arrival on Monday and well into Tuesday.

“I was sitting at breakfast this morning looking out at the course and trying to figure out what was going on, trying to figure out the routing of those few holes around the lake,” Toms said on Tuesday. “Looking out with no trees is fascinating. Somebody asked me how I liked the changes, and I said ‘Wow, it really looks like a whole new golf course.’ We’ll see how it plays, I think it can play very difficult if conditions continue with the wind. We’ll see how it all plays out with the rain and how they set up the golf course, but it is really a difficult test out there.”

Ernie Els won the 1997 U.S. Open at Congressional, and he couldn’t believe his eyes when he first set foot back on the property on the blue course.

“Wow, it’s very different. The holes go in the same direction except for the 10th from '97. But this 10th hole is so much better than the other ones they tried with the greens across the lake with those bunkers,” Els said in his Tuesday presser. “I feel it's a wonderful design. It really is. You walk off most of the tees, the greens right onto the tee, which is nice, and a lot of the tee boxes are exactly the same place as they were back in the day. Very good design.”