Course Preview for the 2025 PGA Championship: Scouting the Routing

May 12, 2025

Ian McNeill's free comprehensive course preview of Quail Hollow Club for the 2025 PGA Championship. Ian examines the course, giving key metrics and trends to help make informed decisions on the PGA betting board.

At a venue that has become known for crowning breakout stars, there is perhaps no better marriage of course and tournament than Quail Hollow Club and the PGA Championship. From Rory McIlroy's scintillating six-under back-nine to capture his first PGA Title, to Rickie Fowler's clutch approach left of the pin on 18, and Justin Thomas's flushed 7-iron on the 223-yard 17th hole, there are no shortage of magical moments around these links, and this week, 156 of the world's best will each be looking to add their entries into Quail Hollow's storybook.

For golf fans, the year's second Major couldn't have come at a better time, as each of the world's top three players will feel they have a legitimate case as the tournament favorite. Scottie Scheffler comes into the week off a record-setting week back home in Dallas, Rory McIlroy travels back to the most successful venue of his PGA career while still basking in the afterglow of his historic Masters' triumph, and Bryson DeChambeau continues to prove week-in, week-out that he's truly a force to be reckoned with no matter which golfing arena he's thrust into. Three all-time greats currently at the peak of their powers, and they provide just a fraction of the potential storylines in play this week in the Queen City.

This piece will serve to break down every key trend and statistic I'm weighing to project a player's viability at Quail Hollow and set our readers up to make the crucial decisions necessary on pre-week betting boards. Without further ado, here is my comprehensive scouting report on Quail Hollow Golf Club and the 2025 PGA Championship!

The Golf Course

Quail Hollow Club - Par 71; 7,626 yards

Past Champions

• 2024 - Xander Schauffele (-21) over Bryson DeChambeau
• 2023 - Brooks Koepka (-9) over Viktor Hovland & Scottie Scheffler
• 2022 - Justin Thomas (-5) over Will Zalatoris (playoff)
• 2021 -  Phil Mickelson (-6) over Brooks Koepka & Louis Oosthuizen
• 2020 - Collin Morikawa (-13) over Paul Casey & Dustin Johnson
• 2019 - Brooks Koepka (-8) over Dustin Johnson

Bonus: PGA Championships held at Quail Hollow

• 2017 - Justin Thomas (-8) over L. Oosthuizen, F. Molinari, and P. Reed

Quail Hollow by the Numbers (Off-The-Tee):

• Average Fairway Width: 28 yards
• Average Driving Distance -- 297.0 yards; eighth highest on Tour
• Driving Accuracy -- 53.8%; fifth lowest on Tour

Much has changed in the landscape of professional golf since Quail Hollow last hosted a Major Championship eight years ago. The PGA Championship has moved from it’s historic spot at the end of August into a comfortable place between the Masters and U.S. Open, and a brand new crop of young talent (many of whom were teenagers when Justin Thomas lifted the 2017 trophy on Quail Hollow’s 18th green), are legitimate contenders to obtain their breakout victories at a venue that has already crowned a bevy of iconic maiden triumphs.

It is the first change: from August to May, however, that may mean the most to this week’s handicap. As 2017’s rendition of Quail Hollow Club played much different than the version we tend to see year-in and year-out on the PGA Tour. The August time-slot eight years ago brought with it a setup featuring wall-to-wall Bermudagrass, and consequently, one of the higher rough penalties in recent Major Championship history.

Missing the fairway in 2017 carried a penalty of 0.44 shots: a figure on par with the likes of Muirfield Village, East Lake, TPC Sawgrass, and TPC Southwind -- a collection of courses that consistently rank as the most penal on the PGA Tour and two of which that uncoincidentally are played with Bermudagrass rough in late summer.

With such a harsh penalty awaiting off-line tee shots, it should come as no surprise that much of the 2017 leaderboard was made up of players who excel more in driving accuracy than driving distance. Kevin Kisner held the 54-hole lead while ranking second in the field in Fairways Hit, and was joined by many more of his shorter-hitting contemporaries on the first page than you'd expect on a golf course measuring over 7,600 yards (Patrick Reed and Francesco Molinari: 2nd, Matt Kuchar: 9th, Ryan Moore and Henrik Stenson: 13th, etc.).

Now in May, I project 2025's version of the PGA Championship in Charlotte will be more reflective of past Wells Fargo Championships we've seen in early spring than the 2017 slog we saw won at 8-under par. The club has confirmed that the entire course from tee through green will be over-seeded with a perennial ryegrass more akin to what we see at TPC Scottsdale in February than the rough us native North Carolinians are used to in the dead of summer.

In those aforementioned Wells Fargo Championships, Quail Hollow has ranked below Tour average in Rough Penalty every season since 2015, and a much different winning profile has emerged to the one laid out at the 2017 PGA. From Rory McIlroy to Wyndham Clark, Jason Day, and Xander Schauffele, essentially the entire list of recent Strokes Gained darlings at Quail Hollow have come from the bomber's faction of professional golf.

I don't intend this rendition playing to anyone else's favor either, as recent rains have softened the course substantially, leading carry distance to be among my main qualifiers this week. Five of the ten par fours on property will be tipping out over 480 yards (and all but one will measure over 450), so anyone without a 300-yard carry in the bag will have it all to do on their second shots. Driving distance and historic performance on other narrow, driver-heavy golf courses will make up the crux of my off-the-tee modeling.

Quail Hollow by the Numbers (Approach):

• Green in Regulation Rate -- 59.2%; Seventh lowest on the PGA Tour
• Strokes Gained: Approach Difficulty: (-0.015); 11th toughest on Tour
• Key Proximity Ranges:
  • 200+ yards (accounts for 32.1% of historical approach shots)
  • 175-200 yards (22.6%)
  • 150-175 yards (19.5%)

One thing I don't anticipate changing from 2017 is the abundance of long-irons required around Quail Hollow's 7,600-yard layout. Eight years ago we saw a much firmer golf course require a shot of >200 yards on a whopping 40% of approaches. And with ample rain in lead-up to this event and an additional 60+ yards added to the scorecard, that number doesn't project to be going down this week.

For my contrarians out there looking for players residing outside of the typical blueprint, this proclivity of long-iron approach shots has opened up one other profile that has found repeated, albeit more muted, success here at Quail Hollow. Over the last four Wells Fargo iterations, names like Sepp Straka, Abraham Ancer, Joel Dahmen, Jason Dufner, and Corey Conners have thrust themselves onto the leaderboards on the back of a more accuracy-intensive style off of the tee -- and, more importantly, elite long-iron play.

Only 24.5% of approach shots last year came from inside of 150 yards -- nearly 15 percentage points lower than the Tour Average, and by contrast, over 55% of approach shots last year came from 175 yards and beyond. If you don't possess the requisite length we discussed in the section above, you'd better have a stellar long-iron game to keep pace from tee to green.

Quail Hollow by the Numbers (Putting):

• Average Green Size: 6,578 sq. feet
• Agronomy -- Poa Trivialis overseed
• Stimpmeter: 12
• 3-Putt Percentage: 3.8% (0.8% above Tour Average)
• Strokes Gained: Putting Difficulty: (-0.010); sixth toughest on Tour

While Quail Hollow's layout is far too demanding to be called a pure "putting contest," recent history here does suggest that you must putt well to win. Each of the last six Wells Fargo Champions, dating back to 2017, has gained at least four strokes on these greens, and only four of 71 players in that time (5.6%) have managed to finish inside the top 10 whilst losing strokes to the field with their flat sticks.

While the agronomy at Quail Hollow has shifted from a pure Bermuda to an overseeded poa in recent years, the common thread of these greens has always been speed. Time will tell just how much of a factor recent rains will have on these surfaces, but if recent history is anything to go on, Quail Hollow features some of the fastest putting surfaces on the PGA Tour, and only Augusta National has made it harder to putt from outside of 15 feet.

Of course, ball-striking remains at the top of my priority list when weighing potential bets/DFS plays this week. However, I think you'd be doing yourself a disservice not to look into some long-term putting splits -- particularly on faster, over-seeded complexes like TPC Sawgrass or Innisbrook. I'll be looking especially hard at Approach Putt Performance, 3-Putt Avoidance, and overall putting acumen on greens with comparably fast surfaces.

Key Stats Roundup (in order of importance):

• Driving Distance/Historic off-the-tee acumen on longer golf courses
• Elite Mid/Long Iron play -- specifically looking at SG/Shot + Proximity splits from >175 yards
• Historic Putting splits on fast greens -- Specifically those with Bermuda base turf and a poa overseed (Sawgrass, Innisbrook, Scottsdale, etc.)
• Recent history at Major Championships (particular emphasis on comparable PGA/US Open venues like Valhalla, Oak Hill, Torrey Pines, etc.
• Bogey Avoidance
• Par 5 Scoring

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End of the Season Totals: @rotoballer @BettorGolfPod

2017 +54.26 Units
2018 +55.88 Units
2019 +27.743 Units
2020 + 37.015 Units
2021 + 68.846 Units
2022 +67.485 Units

Total Winnings: +311.229 Units

Total Outright Wins Since 2017: 36

H2H Totals Inside Thread… https://t.co/pNQrSK1rFE

— Spencer Aguiar (@TeeOffSports) December 12, 2022

The Sunday Shortlist

Before the odds come out on Monday morning, here are two to three names I’ve identified as significant targets upon my initial research.

Bryson DeChambeau

"Good speed -- are you serious? Impossible!"

Bryson DeChambeau birdies No. 18. pic.twitter.com/SGToTyCEi7

— Golf on CBS ⛳ (@GolfonCBS) April 12, 2025

Last time Bryson stepped foot in the state of North Carolina, he produced one of the greatest performances of his career en route to a second U.S. Open title. Now, not even a year later, one could argue DeChambeau arrives back to the Tar Heel State in even better form, and as unequivocally the best driver of the ball currently walking the planet. Bryson's off-the-tee stats on LIV are truly ridiculous: as in seven starts, he's averaging 333 yards per drive while hitting 66% of his fairways -- figures that would rank him 1st on the PGA Tour in distance and top 20 in accuracy.

Not only is the long game working for DeChambeau, but the short game gains we saw in 2024 seem to have carried over into the new year. Bryson's gained strokes putting in each of his last four worldwide starts, and finished second in the field when combining shots saved chipping and putting at Augusta National last month.

With one of his primary achilles heels seemingly a thing of the past, DeChambeau has found himself as one of the most consistent entities in world golf. You'd have to go back to LIV Singapore in March to find a tournament where he wasn't a legitimate factor on the weekend, and further back still to find a U.S. Major where he failed to be relevant.

With a win, two four sixes, and no finish worse than 20th since the 2023 PGA, Bryson's proven he's as tailor-made as they come for these modern American Major setups. He's putted exceptionally well at Quail Hollow through the years (+6.9 strokes gained at the 2018 Wells Fargo; +7.0 in 2021), and has fourth and ninth place finishes to show for it back in his days as a PGA Tour regular.

As things stand, Scottie and Rory deserve to be considered the two best players in world golf, but there's a reason Bryson's outright number has drifted almost alongside them as Round 1 draws closer. With his one-of-a-kind power, he's the only player in this field that can truly knock the teeth out of a setup like Quail Hollow and is far-and-away the biggest threat to the top two's current reign.

Joaquin Niemann

¡Uno más!

Joaquín Niemann con un gran approach y putt para el birdie en el hoyo 8. #elmasters | @joaconiemann pic.twitter.com/EoXCAoRtOx

— El Masters (@TheMasters_ES) April 12, 2025

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— Joe Nicely (@JoeNicely) June 28, 2020

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