2023 PGA Championship at Oak Hill will look different for players

For the PGA Tour pros who played in the 2013 PGA Championship and will be back in May for the 2023 tournament, they will hardly recognize Oak Hill Country Club’s overhauled East Course from a decade ago.

A voluminous renovation has been ongoing for several years and the goal of renowned golf course architect Andrew Green was to restore the East Course as close as possible to the original design Donald Ross created nearly a century ago in Pittsford, New York.

All of which has Kerry Haigh, the PGA of America’s Chief Championship Officer, eager to see how the best players in the world will go about tackling the challenge of the historic tract in Pittsford.

“I can’t wait for the championship to start and the best players in the world to come and be challenged by sort of the new Oak Hill. It’s gonna be great,” Haigh said Wednesday during a visit to see how the course came through the mild winter.

Haigh has been setting up courses for the PGA of America’s premier events for close to three decades. He first came to Oak Hill in 1995 for the Ryder Cup, so he’s seen the East Course in just about every situation imaginable – in May during two Senior PGAs, in August for two PGAs, and in September for the Ryder Cup.

And this iteration may be his favorite of all. “Oak Hill has always been a great golf course and continues to be an even better golf course,” Haigh said.

What’s different on Oak Hill’s East Course?

First and foremost, hundreds upon hundreds of trees, many of them majestic in size and beauty, have been removed. Not only has that given the place a vastly different look aesthetically, but their absence will change some of the shot values in every aspect – off the tee, on approaches, and even chipping around the greens.

“The removal of some of the trees is going to give the players a lot more options than they used to have which in my mind will hopefully turn into more excitement and potentially more birdies,” Haigh said. “Players going for shots that previously, because there were so many trees, they were literally forced to chip out into the fairway. Whereas now there’s an opportunity, potentially, to hit shots towards the green. I think the players will actually enjoy it more.”

State-of-the-art drainage was installed under every green, a godsend for when heavy amounts of rain fall, and all of the putting surfaces were re-planted a couple years ago with a new strain of grass. The shape of several have been altered…