Olly Brett, LPGA’s longtime caddie, isn’t impressed with the Tour’s golf course setup. You’d think that with the LPGA not having a repeat winner this season until October’s Buick LPGA Shanghai, it signals that the LPGA’s course setups vary greatly, but Brett thinks otherwise.

“I personally think the course setups for the LPGA are not great at all,” said Brett in the new episode of the Mixed Bag podcast. “I don’t think we have enough variations or situations, or they set it up hard enough…it’s too soft; the greens get too slow. But my main concern is the pin positions.”

LPGA Tour officials often choose accessibility, which allows the entire field to fire at flags. Pins are placed six or seven off the right, when they could be put three off the right. That distance conveniently does away with the level that separates elites from the average.

Brett argued that the pin positions don’t benefit the best overall player of their week; instead, they benefit somebody getting hot in an individual area. Basically, when everyone can attack the same pins without taking much risk, it loses value. Now, everyone is missing the same places, and everyone has enough greens to work with. This particularly comes at the cost of the long hitters.

“If they miss the green, they’ve got 7 yards to work with, and everybody’s got a good short game,” he mentioned. “They don’t give these girls the respect that they deserve. For me, there’s just not enough variation.”

While some courses, such as Lancaster Country Club for the 2024 US Women’s Open, might allow variety, making it difficult for golfers, the LPGA officials, in Brett’s opinion, often fail to fully exploit this potential. It seems they’re “scared” of the courses becoming “too hard.” This approach becomes more problematic on par 5s.

Olly Brett takes the example of a 595-yard par 5 at TPC Boston. The design is fundamentally flawed, in his opinion. There are ravine bunkers in the middle of the fairway, forcing players to hit driver, wood, or 6-iron. It makes the setup a three-shot hole by design. All this, as per the caddie, is due to a lack of strategy.

Brett, calling himself biased towards decision-making, says the LPGA has been eliminating the need for nuanced course management. He noted the Walmart NW Arkansas Championship as the perfect example for his case. The course is always soft, regardless of the weather.

But while Olly believes that female golfers are being served an easier course on a platter, the golfers themselves have at times a contrasting view to give.

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The dichotomy of too difficult and too easy

The KPMG Women’s PGA Championship this June presented a stark counterargument to Olly Brett’s. The weather was bad, the pace of play was slow, and the players struggled throughout. Nelly Korda, who secured a T19, was too broad in her critique.

“The hole locations are kind of in almost impossible positions,” she said. “It is a major championship, and it should be played hard.  But good shots need to also be rewarded, and I feel like you’re always on defense right now.”

Korda believes she can’t really complain without raising the issue of ‘women whining,’ as per Golfweek.  Like her, Stacy Lewis, who was also on the course, felt the “good players look silly” when trying to play through the setup. The opening par 5 averaged 5.603 strokes. That was the worst scoring average in 30 years!

So what could actually be a solution for all this? Matthew Galloway offers a pragmatic approach.

“My idea is maybe to have a couple of events a year that they can crank it up and make it a more major risk.”

This will create clear expectations for the golfers to specifically prepare for a major championship instead of going through inconsistent challenges week-to-week. This resonates with Mel Reid‘s argument, who stated that due to such unexpected setups—either too easy or too difficult—the golfers are not ready to play when the challenges get up a notch.

“We actually have the benefit of being able to make a golf course match what it deserves to play at,” Olly Brett concludes. “And by hard, I mean 5-10 under, just not 25 under.”