RTJ Golf Club Map

Golf World has another excellent course map, this time of Robert Trent Jones Golf Club. (It would be even better if they used that rubbery glue stuff instead of the staples that force you to tear it up. Not that this helps you online map viewers.)

Surrounding bestapproach.com's rendering are anecdotes provided by Brett Avery:

The course, which Jones called "my masterpiece," originally played to 7,238 yards. In subsequent years the layout has become a veritable laboratory for the tour's course design and construction division, with 13 holes changed in various redesign projects.

Ouch. Trent Jones being remodeled by PGA Tour Design Services. There's a recipe for blandness.

Avery provides the lowdown on the new look, corporate hospitality friendly Presidents Cup routing:

When is an 18th hole not an 18th? When the PGA Tour bows to corporate hospitality skyboxes and begins matches at the club's third tee. Of the 96 matches played here since the 1994 inaugural, only 30 have reached the home hole (and seven in 2000). That meant anyone there hoofed it to the action or watched TV and listened for distant gallery roars. When the club shifted its practice area from uneven terrain near the clubhouse to the other side of several "cottages," event officials moved to No. 3. That means any match going 17 holes--and 56 have in three playings here--will parade before the skyboxes. It also means crucial points could be decided at the club's opening two holes, decidedly weaker challenges than its closing two.

The back nine at RTJ's masterpiece is checking in this week at 3,895 yards, thank you very much.