Quail Hollow’s Green Mile ‘is no snack.’ PGA Tour’s best navigate tough finish — or start

When is the toughest finishing stretch on the PGA Tour, not the toughest finishing stretch on the PGA Tour?

When golfers have to play those holes before making the turn.

Instead of potentially changing golfers’ fortunes as they finished their round, Quail Hollow’s famed Green Mile — holes 16, 17 and 18 — greeted 33 of the field’s 69 golfers early during their first round of play Thursday at the Wells Fargo Championship. The change was necessitated by the drenching rain and unstable weather that ravaged the region Wednesday into Thursday morning.

Instead of the players teeing off in succession from the first tee early in the morning, the PGA Tour shifted to a noontime, split-tee start, sending 12 groups of three off the front nine, and another 11 off the 10th tee.

That set up an interesting opening nine for some of the best golfers in the world — including defending champion Wyndham Clark — who started their rounds on the 592-yard, par-5 10th, but had to contend with 16-17-18 far more quickly than usual.

The good thing about hitting that stretch earlier?

“However you go through that stretch, you know you have plenty more golf ahead of you,” Xander Schauffele said. “No matter if you’re playing them 16-17-18 or 7-8-9, they’re always hard.”

Schauffele, in particular, was grateful to have more golf to play after traversing the Green Mile. He augmented a hot start with a rare birdie at 17 — his eighth hole — to run his score to 5-under par.

But then … 18.

Schauffele hit his drive right, punched to the fairway, lofted his third onto the green and two-putted from 38 feet for a bogey, the only blemish on his card as he charged to the first-round lead with a 7-under 64.

He could have gone for the green, he said, but, “I had a shot to punch it up toward the green, the hazard was very much in play, so Austin (Kaiser, his caddie) talked me out of it, took six pretty much out.

“But five was, you’re gonna make a five 80 to 90 percent of the time to that pin with that wind and how firm the greens are.”

Schauffele fell back a stroke in the moment, but with nine more holes after staring the toughest part of the course in the face early, he recovered. He hit his second shot on the par-5 seventh hole to 5 feet and made eagle, survived an adventure to salvage par on 8, and then capped his round with a birdie to take a three-shot lead into the clubhouse on Day 1.

Two of the top scores Thursday came from players starting on the back nine. The other was Rory McIlroy, a two-time Wells Fargo champion and fan favorite in Charlotte. But even McIlroy had a run-in with the Green Mile.

After turning at 4-under 31, McIlroy stayed there with a pair of birdies and a pair of bogeys through the 15th.

A rare birdie on 16 — one of just three there all day — pushed him back to 5-under, and then dropped his tee shot on the par-3 17th within 12 feet of the back pin location. He missed the putt, but secured a par.

On 18, though, McIlroy faltered. He yanked his drive left, missed the green right with his second shot and then missed a 7-footer for par to close his round at 4-under.

“Left a couple out there, I feel, but at the same time, I’ve got three more days to try to build on what I’ve done today,” McIlroy said.

Jason Day, the 2018 Wells Fargo champion who flirted with the lead for most of the afternoon, took advantage of his starting position, too. In the second group off the back nine, Day posted an eagle on 10 and a birdie on 11 on his way to an opening-nine 4-under 32. That didn’t come without some tense moments on the Green Mile. He nearly dunked his approach on 16, snaked in a 20-foot par on 17, and missed both the fairway and the green on 18 before saving par from the greenside bunker.

“I actually played really good on the tough side,” Day said with a laugh. “Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen is no snack. It’s crazy, you kind of have to really pick where you can make birdies.”

After turning at 4-under, Day played the front nine in 1-over 36 to post a 3-under total which, in some years might make a comeback win difficult. This year?

“Typically, if you don’t see anything lower than, like, (minus) seven, in the first round, sometimes it doesn’t get to, it goes like lower teens,” Day said. “In the past, this course, the winning score has been like 16-under par, but I think the scores are going to be higher than that.”

With the PGA Championship just a week away, Day said playing Quail Hollow this week — and its Green Mile — was a welcome sight.

“It’s been a while since we’ve played greens like these,” Day said. “Back in the day, we’d bounce a pitching wedge five or 10 paces. It seems like that just hasn’t been like that for a long time. It’s nice to see for a change.

Added Day: “It kind of felt like a mini-major here this week.”