PGA Tour
'It is a little disappointing': Billy Horschel, other tour pros sound off on PGA National setup
Ben Jared
This is not your grandfather's Honda Cognizant Classic. Hell, it might not even be your father's, either.
On Thursday at the historically-difficult Champion Course at PGA National, Jake Knapp, winner of the 2024 Mexico Open, absolutely torched one of Jack Nicklaus' proudest works. And "absolutely torched" might be underselling it. The 30-year-old Knapp shot 59, the 15th sub-60 round in PGA Tour history. Knapp even had a solid look at 58, which would have matched the lowest score in tour history, a record held by Jim Furyk who shot a final-round 58 at the 2016 Travelers Championship.
Knapp's 59 is now the course record on the Champion Course, eclipsing the previous record of 61 held by Brian Harman (2012 Honda Classic). That same week, Tiger Woods posted a final-round 62 on Sunday. The winning score over 72 holes that week? Twelve under par. Knapp shot 12 under ... on Thursday.
Naturally, this miscarriage of golf justice had Golf Twitter up in arms. This was once a tournament where single-digit winning scores were the norm. A U.S. Open-like test, in Florida of all places. Much of that was often due to high winds and crispy, almost-brown-colored Bermudagrass fairways and greens that baked in the Florida sun.
That changed in 2023 when the tournament began overseeding the Bermudagrass with Ryegrass, a practice to help soften conditions and make the golf course greener. Chris Kirk won that year at 14 under. Last year, Austin Eckroat won with a score of 17 under. In the previous 19 editions of the event, no winner had shot any lower than 14 under.
This has not only come as a shock to those on the internet. Some of the players playing in the actual event sounded off on the soft setup, too. Among them was Billy Horschel, a Florida man through and through who contextualized what's taking place so far in the first round in Palm Beach Gardens.
"There was no wind so it helps tremendously," Horschel said after shooting a first-round 66. "You've got to tip your hat to him [Knapp]. He shot a 12-under par 59 at PGA National, which no one ever thought. I know we had a discussion earlier this week and I've probably changed my tune a little bit. I think the overseed has -- the rough is not long enough. It's not penal enough when you miss the fairway.
"I really wish we would just play this as a straight Bermuda," he added. "From tee to green, everything be straight Bermuda. I know it doesn't look prettier on TV and I know that's one of the reasons why it's overseeded."
The easier conditions are especially tough to swallow for a player like Horschel, who grew up playing on straight Bermudagrass and felt he had an advantage because of that at courses like PGA National. That advantage is non-existent this week.
"It is a little disappointing that, I'd say the condition of the course is very scorable," Horschel said. "But at the same time, you've still got to go out there, you've still got to hit golf shots, you've still got to make putts. But this will be, right now, if scoring sort of stays the way it is going into the afternoon, I'm going to suspect because there's not much wind projected this afternoon, this will be the lowest scoring average in the history of this tournament by I'm going to say a shot and a half."
Jordan Spieth, who is making his debut in the Cognizant Classic this week, shot a six-under 65 on Thursday. Like Horschel, he pointed out that when there's no wind, just about any course is gettable for the world's best. But he also said Thursday's setup in particular wasn't all that challenging.
"I thought from a course setup they weren't many of the hardest pins on the golf course," said Spieth. "A lot of them were in gettable locations, and then we didn't have any wind, so it was a beautiful morning."
Joel Dahmen, who is also playing this week, tweeted before his round that he misses "the old PGA National." Michael Kim also took to Twitter after his opening 65 to say "Big Rye overseed and no wind make this course much easier but I did not think I'd be six shots back after a 65."
As of now, a total of 109 players are in red figures. Twenty-one of them have already posted rounds of five-under 66 or better.