Scottie Scheffler isn’t a fan of East Lake’s golf course setup. On moving day, he shot a bogey-free 66, moving into a share of third at 12 under and three strokes shy of leader Viktor Hovland. But instead of feeling good about the result, the World No. 1 spent his press conference explaining how his struggles at East Lake mirror Aronimink this year.
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When asked about the tightly bunched leaderboard, Scheffler was quick to point to the setup at the Tour Championship. “I think when I talk about some of the pin locations, I think that has a lot to do with it. When you have really, really large green complexes like these and they tuck the pins very close to the edges, it’s a balancing act between how much you want to bite off.”
Scheffler believes the conditions are fragile enough that missing a short side on one of those greens can turn a birdie into a 50-foot lag putt in just one swing.
The World No. 1 even had numbers to back his argument. He revealed he’d asked East Lake’s scoring department, just out of curiosity, how the par-3 ninth hole had played across the week. The answer: 87 players through three rounds had produced just two birdies and six bogeys, leaving 79 pars.
Reasonably, it’s a “very high score” for Scheffler. He even felt like “skipping” the round at this point.
Scheffler even used a five-wood into the hole Saturday from the back tee, trying to figure out that extra length might finally produce bogeys. Instead, it produced more pars. His frustration with the course setup boiled down to a simple preference.
“I love seeing rewards for good shots and punishments for bad.”
The five-wood attempt failed for Scheffler. He argued that modern course design works against it by widening fairways and then protecting par by tucking pins into the corners.
The course underwent a full redesign by architect Andrew Green ahead of the 2024 championship, rebuilding every green complex with wider, more contoured putting surfaces modeled on 1994 photographs of the club. Restoring character was the intention behind the changes, but they also provided tournament officials with more space to tuck pins into corners without technically exhausting the available green area.
The description of the struggles lines up almost exactly with what happened at May in the PGA Championship at Aronimink. Scheffler and Rory McIlroy both referenced the course unprompted on Saturday.
For context, the comparison is not without precedent. That week had produced seven players sharing an 18-hole lead, certainly the most in a major in 57 years. 28 players were within two shots of each other midway through the third round. Even then, Scheffler had called Aronimink’s hole location the “hardest set of pin locations that I have seen since I’ve been on the tour, and that includes the U.S. Open.”
McIlroy, who charged into the mix himself with a seven-under 63 on Saturday, made a similar point to CBS Sports after his round. He said the field used to separate more before the renovation.
Nonetheless, Scheffler’s remedy is simple. He wants the shots that get close to be rewarded and shots that miss to be punished rather than everyone funneled towards the same cautious targets. Until Eastlake’s pins move away from the edges, he might keep facing similar trouble.