Tiger Skipping Quail Hollow & Its Troubled Greens
/Doug Ferguson surmises that Tiger's decision not to play the Wells Fargo Championship at Quail Hollow is a product of its week-closer-to-Augusta date.
However, photos making the rounds show troubled putting surfaces on a few holes recently rebuilt (again) by the Fazio family re-doing their previous work. And knowing Tiger's history of avoiding potentially suspect greens out of fear of messing up his stroke, it's not a surprise he is passing.
Alex Miceli has the lowdown on the Quail Hollow greens situation, which includes Tour player and member Johnson Wagner blaming the PGA Tour's agronomy staff of making things worse.
Wagner played at Quail Hollow two weeks ago during the Masters and putted on temporary greens at Nos. 8 and 10. Upon seeing the greens Monday, he said it was clear that the putting surfaces would be bumpier then usual, but the eighth and 10th greens were in trouble.
Wagner blamed the problems at No. 10 on extensive top-dressing by the Tour's agronomy staff, which oversees conditions at host courses in advance of tournaments. “It went from a perfectly sodded green three weeks ago, which I thought was unbelievable, to being dead,” Wagner said.
Pazder vehemently disagreed as to why the 10th green needed to be re-sodded. “There were a number of factors involved which contributed to the decline in the conditions of the 10th green,” said Pazder, without elaborating, "but over-top-dressing was not one of them.”