By Mike Blum
For the first 15 years of its existence, the PGA Tour Championship was a tournament without a permanent home.
The season-ending event was played for the first time in 1987 at Oak Hills in San Antonio, and spent the next decade moving from Pebble Beach to Harbour Town to the Champions Club to Pinehurst to the Olympic Club to Southern Hills.
Beginning in 1997, the tournament began alternating sites between the Champions Club in Houston and East Lake in Atlanta before East Lake became the event’s annual host beginning in 2004.
This will be the 13th time East Lake has been the site for the Tour Championship, with the course producing a wide range of champions over the past 15 years.
The Tour Championship by Coca Cola will be played Sept. 19-22, culminating the FedExCup Playoffs, which were first held in 2007. The Playoffs have provided the PGA Tour with a worthy conclusion to a schedule that was rendered largely irrelevant after the PGA Championship to all but golf’s most ardent fans.
The top 30 in the FedExCup Playoffs standings after the BMW Championship will comprise the field at East Lake, with this year’s tournament having one distinction from the past few.
Brandt Snedeker, last year’s champion, will be back to defend his title, giving the tournament a defending champion for the first time since Phil Mickelson in 2010. Jim Furyk, the 2010 winner, did not qualify for the Tour Championship the next year, and Bill Haas was left out of last year’s field after his memorable 2011 playoff victory over Hunter Mahan.
Mickelson, the lone player to win twice at East Lake, is the only champion to make a return appearance the next year since 2006 winner Adam Scott qualified in ’07.
With an exception or two, the list of champions at East Lake since 1998 features the most prominent names in golf during that time. The most notable exception came in 2005, when journeyman Bart Bryant led wire to wire after an opening 62, finishing six shots ahead of Tiger Woods, who has been a runner-up four times in the event.
After finishing second three times in a four-tournament span at East Lake, Woods broke though with a dominant 8-stroke margin of victory in 2007, the first time the event was played in September after moving from its traditional early November spot on the schedule.
That was also the last year the tournament was played on East Lake’s increasingly vulnerable bent grass greens, which struggled with the Summer heat and mid-September dates. The new MiniVerde Bermuda surfaces have returned the challenge to the famed Donald Ross layout, which was extensively renovated in the early 1990s by Rees Jones.
In two of the last three years the tournament was played on bent grass greens, the winning scores were 17 and 23-under on the par-70 layout. Snedeker became the first player to finish double digits under par since then, winning by three over Justin Rose at 10-under 270.
With two of the par 5s (holes 5 and 10) playing as par 4s for the Tour Championship, East Lake plays to a par 70 and will measure between 7150 and 7300 yards for the tournament.
Although the renovated East Lake layout does not lack for length, it is a course that can be tamed by players who are not among the game’s longest hitters. Furyk won three years on ago on a wet track that played longer than it normally does, and Snedeker used his deadly putting touch last year to more than compensate for the unimposing length of his average tee shot.
Certainly, big hitters are prominent on East Lake’s list of champions, including the game’s current 1, 2 and 3 players – Woods, Scott and Mickelson. But each of those three major champions, as well as past East Lake champions Vijay Singh and Retief Goosen, are much more than just grip-it-and-rip-it types.
Among East Lake’s first line of defense is the thick Bermuda rough that lines every fairway and borders most of the large, undulating putting surfaces. The abundance of rain and relatively cool temperatures this Summer will allow tournament officials to adjust the rough to their preferences, and with the firmness of the greens since their conversion, will place a premium on driving accuracy.
Given the narrow fairways at East Lake and just one easily reachable par 5 (hole 15), you would not necessarily expect Mickelson to be the tournament’s lone two-time champion. But the 43-year-old lefty has a long history of success in Atlanta, going back to Roswell’s Horseshoe Bend and the American Junior Golf Association Rolex Tournament of Champions, which he won three times from 1986-88.
Mickelson also won the BellSouth Classic at TPC Sugarloaf three times, and a victory in the Tour Championship would give him three three-peats in Atlanta, four in Georgia including his three Masters green jackets.
Both of Mickelson’s Tour Championship titles have resulted from final round comebacks, with Mickelson taking down Woods on both occasions. He trailed both Woods and Singh by one going to the final round in 2000, fired a 4-under 66 and won by two over Woods, who closed with a 69.
In 2009, Mickelson was two behind Kenny Perry and four in back of Woods after 54 holes, shot 65 and cruised to a 3-stroke victory at 9-under 271 after opening with a 73.
Woods was also a distant 2nd in both 2004 and ’05. He shot 72 the final day in ’04 after being a third round co-leader with a 4-stroke margin over Goosen, who finished four ahead of Woods after a sizzling 64. The next year Woods was simply outmatched by Bryant, who won only two other tournaments during his PGA Tour career.
In part because of the limited field, the Tour Championship has had its share of finishes that were not exactly nail-biters, although there have been three playoffs, including 2011 and ’08, when Camilo Villegas won against Sergio Garcia. That was likely the most spirited final round battle in the tournament’s history, with Mickelson and Anthony Kim missing the playoff by just one shot.
The only time in tournament history the winner finished one ahead of the runner-up was 2010, when Furyk scored his rain-soaked victory over Luke Donald. The 2011 finish almost rivaled that of ’08, with Donald, K.J. Choi and Aaron Baddeley tying for 3rd, one out of the Haas-Mahan playoff. That tournament, however, lacked the final round fireworks of the four-way battle three years earlier.
As outstanding as East Lake is from a player’s standpoint, it’s also a terrific venue for the thousands of spectators who will visit the course during the 2013 Tour Championship. The compact layout is easily walk-able, with the 15th the lone hole with a significant uphill trek.
Holes intersect at several spots around the course, with spectators able to move from one group to another without much effort, as well as eyeing the action at multiple points of play with minimal movement.
Public parking for the 2013 Tour Championship is free at Turner Field, with spectators shuttled to the course. All four rounds will be televised on Golf Channel and NBC. Golf Channel will broadcast from 1-6 p.m. Thursday and Friday, and will have early round coverage Saturday (10 a.m.-noon) and Sunday (11:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m.).
NBC will be on the air Saturday from noon-3:30 and 1:30-6 p.m. Sunday, with the early Saturday broadcast time the result of NBC’s contract with Notre Dame football.