TULSA, Oklahoma – Perry Maxwell was an Oklahoma golf legend, a banker-turned-architect who designed dozens of courses in the Sooner State and beyond. Best known for his challenging, undulating greens, Maxwell worked – as either principal architect, collaborator or renovator – on many of America’s top-rated courses.
Augusta National, Merion, Crystal Downs and Prairie Dunes – each ranked in the top 15 among Golfweek’s Best ranking of classic courses in the United States – were among the beneficiaries of Maxwell’s touch.
His design tally, of course, includes Southern Hills Country Club in Tulsa, site of this year’s PGA Championship. Opened in 1936, Southern Hills has been host to a slew of championships ranging from the U.S. Women’s Open to the Senior PGA Championship and counts among its men’s majors four past PGA Championships (1970, ’82, ’94 and ’07) and three U.S. Opens (’58, ’77 and ’01). It sits at No. 1 among private courses in Oklahoma in Golfweek’s Best rankings, and it is No. 38 on Golfweek’s Best list of classic courses built before 1960 in the U.S.
Southern Hills: Yardage book | Aerial shots and drone footage
And thanks to 2019 restoration and renovation efforts by the architecture team of Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner, Southern Hills will again display in full grandeur Maxwell’s brilliant routing and sometimes infuriating greens during this year’s PGA Championship.
“We’re excited about the work we did there,” said Hanse, who in recent years has become known as a go-to expert in restoring major-championship courses . “Perry Maxwell’s routing was absolutely brilliant. I don’t know how you could lay a golf course better on that piece of property. The variety, the character, just the way the holes seem to fit perfectly there. And the features, primarily the greens and how good they were and what interesting targets they were and the level of precision required to play good golf at Southern Hills – it struck us as being really, really high quality.”
Back to Maxwell
No. 1 at Southern Hills Country Club in Tulsa, Okla. (Gabe Gudgel/Golfweek)
Hanse has been given plenty of opportunities in recent years to tackle major challenges. His and Wagner’s original design skills were on full display at the Olympic Course for the 2016 Games in Brazil, and his restorations to major-championship courses include Winged Foot, Los Angeles Country Club, Oakland Hills South, Baltusrol and beyond. The PGA of America entrusted the design team to build the East Course at PGA Frisco, the organization’s new home scheduled to fully open in 2023 that already is slated to host multiple championships.
At Southern Hills, it was clear Maxwell’s original design intentions and strategic brilliance had been muted by general course evolution and also by intentional redesign throughout the decades. Trees had sprouted, greens were altered and creeks were buried. The beautiful, naturalistic bunkers had been converted into rounded saucers. Various designers worked on the course, including Robert Trent Jones in the 1950s in preparation for a U.S. Open.
The layout, in many ways, no longer presented the same test envisioned by Maxwell. Starting about 20 years ago, the club began unveiling plans to return to its Maxwell roots, and in the 2000s undertook an initial restoration by architect Keith Foster that helped prepare the layout for the 2007 PGA Championship won by Tiger Woods. Many trees were removed, and Foster restored the interiors of Maxwell’s greens. Hanse and Wagner’s work, along with that of their Caveman Construction crew, was a full extenuation of those earlier efforts.
But first, Hanse and Wagner had much to learn about the layout, the strategy involved and Perry Maxwell himself. After being contacted about the club’s possible restoration by Southern Hills superintendent Russ Myers, with home Hanse and Wagner had worked during their restoration of Los Angeles Country Club, the team got busy.
“We saw that the bones of the place were amazing, but that it had changed over a long period of time, just the evolution of the course,” Hanse said. “I told Russ we would love to work with the club if they would be willing to consider a fairly significant restoration in the attempt to bring back Perry Maxwell.
“It’s not dissimilar from how we approach any great, old golf course, whether it’s (A..W.) Tillinghast or (Donald) Ross or (Alister) MacKenzie, or (C.B.) Macdonald or (Seth) Rainer. We go and do our research on the original architect. Before Southern Hills, we had never done a Perry Maxwell course, so we had a lot to learn about him from a stylistic and design standpoint.”
The greens make the difference
The heat map of No. 10 green at Southern Hills, provided by StrackaLine, shows the green’s extreme tilt from right to left. A creek below the green waits to gobble up any shots that spin off the green and down a hill. (Courtesy of StrackaLine)
Key to that style and design were Maxwell’s greens. Among golf architecture fans Maxwell is famous for the interior undulations – often referred to as Maxwell Rolls – of his putting surfaces. But at Southern Hills, it is the outward portions of the greens that catch the eye while repelling approach shots.
Instead of sometimes crazy slopes in the center of greens as defining features, Southern Hills’ greens tend to sit at natural angles matching the surrounding terrain. A perfect example is found on No. 10, where the green is nestled into a slope that rises steeply to the right, with a severe drop-off to the left. As with most of the greens at Southern Hills, the edges – particularly on the left side – of the green simply will not hold a rolling golf ball. Instead, shots that are overcooked tend to slide leftward off the putting surface and could run all the way to a creek some 20 yards below. Even with likely wedges or short irons in their hands on No. 10, competitors in the PGA Championship will be forced to respect such slopes.
“We hear a lot about the Maxwell Rolls (at other courses), and generally they are more assigned to rolls on the interior of the greens. But at Southern Hills, it’s really about the edges of the greens,” Hanse said. “You have to respect the edges. Because if you don’t, and you get anywhere near the edges, then your ball is coming off. And the requirements for the recovery shots can be fairly stern.”
Hanse credits club historian Clyde Chrisman with providing a treasure trove of photos that displayed Maxwell’s style, including the original severity of the greens’ edges. Following Foster’s earlier work in restoring portions of the greens, Hanse and Wagner were free to focus on restoking the edginess of Maxwell’s design. As those threatening edges work in concert with the natural tilts of the original putting surfaces – and factoring in the frequent Oklahoma winds – players will be forced to strategize on their best paths to any hole location before ever striking a tee shot.
There might be no ‘below the hole’
No. 13 at Southern Hills Country Club in Tulsa, Okla. (Gabe Gudgel/Golfweek)
A big part of that strategy will be patience. Players at Southern Hills can’t always fire directly at the flagsticks without watching even well-struck but poorly chosen shots roll off the greens. Instead, they frequently must play well to the safer side with hopes of balls rolling toward the hole. And because the greens in general are tilted, that often means playing to the higher side.
Players at many classic courses with severe greens are frequently advised to keep the ball beneath the hole to earn easier uphill putts, but at Southern Hills that sometimes might be impossible. Depending on hole locations, especially those set on the lower portions of the greens, any ball beneath the hole is likely to catch an edge and repel off the putting surface, thus requiring a chip or pitch over the same bedeviling edge that caused the problem in the first place. Instead, players must aim above the lower hole locations and accept the ensuing and tricky downhill putts.
That kind of challenge means PGA Chief Championships Officer Kerry Haigh will have plenty of opportunities to challenge the best players in the world with his course setup and hole locations.
“It will be interesting,” Hanse said. “I think the great thing about it, Kerry Haigh will have options. If there’s been rain and the wind’s not blowing and the course is a little bit soft, he may get a little bit more aggressive as he moves closer to the edges. If it’s been really dry and the greens are firm and the wind’s blowing, he’ll have opportunity to back off. That kind of flexibility will certainly come in handy that week.”
That the greens are beautifully conditioned certainly will help. The surfaces feature bent grass, a northern strain that can be difficult to manage in Oklahoma’s range of freezing winters followed by scorching summers. During the latest restoration, with the help of RAE Corporation and its Technical Systems team, pipes were laid beneath the putting surfaces that allow officials to pump temperature-controlled water to heat or cool the greens and maintain ideal growing conditions. Come what may during the PGA Championship, the grounds crew will have technology on its side in presenting smooth, perfected putting surfaces.
A natural feel
No. 18 at Southern Hills Country Club in Tulsa, Okla. (Gabe Gudgel/Golfweek)
Hanse and Wagner’s work also extended well beyond the greens, of course. The tree-removal program was accelerated to open long views across much of the property, particularly in lower areas near creeks that had taken on a forest appearance. Bunkers were reshaped in the more-natural style of traps constructed by Maxwell, and those sandy hazards were repositioned to challenge the longer tee shots of modern touring professionals.
“Part of the restoration was a return to a more rustic and natural look and feel,” Hanse said. “You know, the golf course had evolved over long periods of time and gotten away from that, become a bit more formalized in its presentation. I think the club’s recognizing and embracing more of that rugged and open feel was exciting for us.”
The course was stretched from 7,131 yards in the 2007 PGA Championship to 7,481 yards on the scorecard with a par of 70 for the main event – it normally plays to par 71 for the members, but the par-5 16th will play as a par 4 for the PGA.
Hanse and Wagner maintained the classic design features that were still relevant while introducing changes where appropriate. For example, they moved fairway bunkers from the right side of No. 1 to the left side to better challenge players attempting to set up the best angle into the green. At the dogleg-left, par-4 seventh, the design duo replaced a green introduced by Jones, extending and reshaping the hole to play to a new putting surface perched tight above a creek on the right.
“A lot of it is looking at the potential for where players are going to hit the ball off the tee and positioning fairway hazards so they are in play for that class of golfer. The rest of it, the strategy, the greens, for the most part we’re going to trust that Perry Maxwell got all that right,” Hanse said. “So far, so good on all that.
“The classic designers were so good at what they did, even 85 years later – and I really hate this phrase but I can’t think of a better way to describe it – they really stand the test of time. They are still relevant in this day and age because the focus was solely and squarely on good golf.”
These par 3s are tough
The heat map of No. 14 green at Southern Hills, provided by StrackaLine, shows how the green is built to reject shots to the left, front and right. The hole is a 230-yard par 3 that can be stretched even longer. The areas shown in red are unlikely to hold any golf shot, while the areas in green will allow a ball to come to rest. (Courtesy of StrackaLine)
Nowhere on the course will players be more challenged to produce such good golf as on the four par 3s, three of which stretch to 220 yards and beyond. Simply put, they are brutes, combinations of water, sand, trees and slopes. But even with Nos. 6, 8 and 14 playing to similar yardages on the scorecard, much of their challenge and variety will be dictated by the frequently gusty winds.
“The good thing about those holes is they play in different directions,” said Hanse, who pointed out that Haigh will have flexibility in choosing distances for the par 3s – and that most PGA Championship participants still will likely hit irons into all three of the long one-shotters. “You would hate to have three par 3s that all play to a similar yardage if they all play either downwind or into the wind. If they guys are pulling the same club for the shots into all of them, that wouldn’t be good from a variety standpoint. But because the holes are all moving in different directions, and the wind is generally a part of the puzzle at Southern Hills, we felt pretty good about them being at that length and sort of being in a cluster of yardages.”
Another area that stands out will be the shared green sites for Nos. 9 and 18, which finish side-by-side on a steep slope beneath the club’s stately clubhouse. The grandstands above that beautiful setting – with No. 1 teeing off just to the left side and No. 10 teeing off to the right above the ninth and 18th greens – will provide prime viewing opportunities, all with the skyline of downtown Tulsa in distance.
But PGA Championship contestants will have scant time to enjoy the idyllic setting, especially after facing the challenges of Nos. 17 and 18. They are two par 4s that present very a multitude of options, forcing players to think without overthinking with the tournament on the line.
So many options
No. 17 at Southern Hills Country Club in Tulsa, Okla. (Gabe Gudgel/Golfweek)
No. 17 maxes out at 371 yards on the scorecard, its two-level green loaded with devilish hole locations perched high above two branches of a creek. If that sounds like challenge enough for approach shots, consider that many players will likely ignore the safe route up the left side of the fairway and instead blast away at the green from the tee. Depending on wind direction and tee location, the green is definitely within reach of many touring professionals, especially if Haigh chooses to push the markers forward. A score of 2 will be in play, as will a score of 6.
Hanse and Wagner focused on revitalizing Maxwell’s original 17th, reintroducing a water hazard short of the green that had been buried at some point over the decades. With the green lifted above fairway grade and runoffs sending balls rocketing off in all directions, the 17th green is proof that length isn’t everything. There are so many tee shot options and ways to play the hole – safely up the left or more boldly toward the green – and players must make their choices under the gun.
“We realized it’s still incredibly relevant for today’s game with all kinds of options and different ways to play it,” Hanse said of No. 17, “and we were going to restore those options and that thought process. I think any course architect would love holes that make you think. If you get the opportunity to restore a chance for a golfer who is being very cerebral to gain an advantage, that has to excite any golf course architect.”
Next up is No. 18, which tees off past that 17th green and drops to a creek that runs down the right side before crossing the fairway on a diagonal some 290-340 yards off the back tee. From there, the hole turns right up the hill toward the clubhouse. Players have to choose a safer tee shot to a plateau on the left side of the fairway that will leave an uphill long iron or even fairway wood into the green, or a bolder tee shot that will roll downhill toward the creek while shortening the challenging approach.
“I think 18 is just so hard, they’re going to want to get as close as they possibly can (to the creek) for that approach shot,” Hanse said. “It’s a hard, hard golf hole.”
Just as Maxwell intended. And just how Hanse and Wagner drew it up in the renovation, keeping true to Maxwell’s intent. It’s the kind of studious approach that has earned the modern architecture team the opportunities to work on so many classic courses that plan to host major championships well into the future.
“We don’t take this lightly,” Hanse said of the diligence required in classic restoration and renovation. “We understand the responsibility that has been entrusted to us, and we hope that we continue to follow through on these opportunities. It’s more important to us that Perry Maxwell gets the credit. If we do something where Perry Maxwell’s name is held in higher regard, or they’re like, “Wow, Perry Maxwell, what a great golf course,” that is honestly more meaningful to me than people just saying that Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner did this and did that.
“It’s more important that the general golfing public gets to know more about Perry Maxwell during this PGA Championship.”
