Everything you need to know for the final round from PGA West.
Something special is happening in La Quinta, California, this weekend as amateur Nick Dunlap will enter Sunday’s final round at PGA West’s Stadium Course with the outright American Express lead thanks to a third-round 12-under 60.
Dunlap will have to fend off star power over the final 18 holes with Sam Burns at 24 under, three back, and Justin Thomas at 23 under.
The purse this week is $8.4 million with the winner taking home $1.512 million. Dunlap is not eligible to take home his winnings because of his amaterur status.
The American Express is held at three courses: Pete Dye’s PGA West Stadium Course, PGA West’s Nicklaus Tournament Course and La Quinta Country Club. Everyone who made the 54-hole cut on Saturday will play the Pete Dye Stadiu Course on Sunday.
From tee times to TV and streaming info, here’s everything you need to know for Sunday’s final round of the 2024 American Express. All times listed are ET.
Everything you need to know for the third round from La Quinta and PGA West.
With 36 holes of the American Express in the books, Sam Burns owns the lead at 17 under thanks to a second-round 11-under 61 on the Nicklaus Tournament Course at PGA West.
Burns leads Michael Kim (16 under) by one and K.H. Lee (15 under) and amateur Nick Dunlap by two.
The American Express is held at three courses: Pete Dye’s PGA West Stadium Course, PGA West’s Nicklaus Tournament Course and La Quinta Country Club. A cut will be made after 54 holes.
The purse this week is $8.4 million with the winner taking home $1.512 million.
From tee times to TV and streaming info, here’s everything you need to know for Saturday’s third round of the 2024 American Express. All times listed are ET.
Everything you need to know for the second round from La Quinta and PGA West.
The first day of the 2024 American Express in La Quinta, California, has come and gone, and there’s a familiar name tied for the lead.
Zach Johnson, the 2023 U.S. Ryder Cup Captain and two-time major winner, shot 10-under 62 at La Quinta Country Club and is tied with Alex Noren for the lead after 18 holes. Noren also played La Quinta in the opening round, matching Johnson’s 62.
The American Express is held at three courses: Pete Dye’s PGA West Stadium Course, PGA West’s Nicklaus Tournament Course and La Quinta Country Club. A cut will be made after 54 holes.
The purse this week is $8.4 million with the winner taking home $1.512 million.
From tee times to TV and streaming info, here’s everything you need to know for Friday’s second round of the 2024 American Express. All times listed are ET.
Everything you need to know for the first round from La Quinta and PGA West.
After a two-week swing through the Hawaiian islands to kick off the 2023 calendar year, the PGA Tour is bound for PGA West and La Quinta, California, this week for the 2024 The American Express.
Held across the Pete Dye Stadium Course, Nicklaus Tournament Course and La Quinta Country Club, the AmEx has once again produced a strong field with a handful of featured pairings worth keeping an eye on, including Rickie Fowler/Justin Thomas, Xander Schauffele/Tony Finau and Scottie Scheffler/Patrick Cantlay. Defending champion Jon Rahm is not in the field after his move to LIV Golf.
From tee times to TV and streaming info, here’s everything you need to know for Thursday’s opening round of the 2024 The American Express. All times listed are ET.
LA QUINTA, California — When the No. 1 men’s golfer in the world says your greens are among the best, it’s a compliment to be taken seriously.
“They may be some of the best surfaces I’ve ever seen,” Scottie Scheffler said last January of the greens at La Quinta Country Club, one of the three courses played in The American Express PGA Tour event. “They’re really, really good. That’s consistent. It’s been like that — I think this is my fourth time here at this event — and they have been like that every time I’ve been over there. It’s pretty amazing what that superintendent and the club can do with those greens.”
What Scheffler and the other golfers in The American Express might not have known last January was that the greens on the back nine of La Quinta Country Club had been stripped down and had new grass planted in the summer of 2022. That same process is taking place at the club this summer on the front nine, with superintendent Tim Putnam certain of the same results.
“If you look at the data, they were virtually identical, for the speed of the greens, the firmness of the greens, all that,” Putnam said of the back-nine greens from 2022 to 2023. “They were virtually identical.”
Putnam, approaching his 21st anniversary at La Quinta Country Club, said swapping out the tifdwarf Bermuda grass on the greens for basically the same kind of tifdwarf is needed to help the course and keep the greens receiving rave reviews from tour players.
“(Hybrid Bermuda grass) starts to mutate and revert back into its parent types, which were 328 (variety),” Putnam said. “And then you get a lot of contamination that comes in through various processes.”
The ninth green is seen dug out for renovations with the clubhouse in the background at La Quinta Country Club in La Quinta, Calif., Friday, June 23, 2023. Photo: Andy Abeyta/Desert Sun/USA Today Network
Part of an overall project at the club
The process this summer includes stripping all of the grass from the putting surfaces, with the help of some herbicides.
What’s the secret to La Quinta Country Club’s pristine greens once compared to Augusta National’s?
“Then we come in and we punch a little bit, stir it up a little bit and we apply a little granular fumigant to it,” Putnam said.
The tifdwarf being replaced now has been on the course since 1999, the year of a major renovation to the La Quinta course. While Putnam says players in The American Express should see no difference in the putting surfaces next January, the obvious changes will be in the late spring, summer and fall.
“(The greens) were bad in the summer and the renovation part of the overseeding (the transition of grasses in the spring) was becoming difficult because of the different growth habits of the mutations and the contamination species in there,” Putnam said. “It made it very hard to get an even renovation on the greens. It was going to eventually start affecting the overseeding process.”
“Long-term health of the golf course is the priority here,” said Chris Gilley, head golf professional at La Quinta Country Club. “The great thing about La Quinta Country Club is that it has the reputation it is because of who has been running it, not because the tour is dictating it. The tour chooses to come back every year, which is great.”
Another part of the work at the course this year is the removal of 135 trees from the property, 125 of which were single date palms. Putnam said the trees were getting old and becoming a hazard.
“Just this year we lost six date palms during the season to wind events,” Putnam said. “They are breaking at what is called a drought ring. When a date palm is transplanted, it undergoes a shock from being pulled out of the ground and put into a new one. What happens is the trunk will get skinny, and then as it gets established it goes back to growing its normal width.”
A young ghost gum or Eucalyptus papuana tree is seen planted between the first and ninth holes with older date palm trees standing in the background at La Quinta Country Club in La Quinta, Calif., Friday, June 23, 2023. The date palm trees are being phased out as a safety hazard since they are prone to wind damage and will be removed once the new trees are of substantial height in the next couple years. Photo: Andy Abeyta/Desert Sun/USA Today Network
The older trees become fragile at the drought ring and become a danger for breaking and falling. To replace the trees being taken out, La Quinta is planting 90 new trees, with varieties from eucalyptus to Chinese elm to mesquite.
“So it’s not like we are going to be changing the strategy of the golf course or anything,” Putnam said. “Some of the ones that were removed were at (the PGA Tour’s) request as well. And we still have more than 350 palm trees on the property.”
Putnam said while the PGA Tour doesn’t have approval rights to projects at La Quinta Country Club, the club takes its reputation for great greens seriously.
“It is definitely motivation,” Putnam said. “We’ve got to make sure that these greens are as good as they were last year. I don’t want to have a down year. You don’t want to hear, “What happened to these greens here?’ ”
Jon Rahm has earned four of his nine PGA Tour wins in California.
He’s also now 2-for-2 in 2023, having won the Sentry Tournament of Champions in Hawaii two weeks ago and the American Express in La Quinta, California. He’s won four of his last six starts and is 54 under in his last eight rounds.
After winning in the Southern California desert near Palm Springs for the second time, Rahm was beaming about the way things are going so far.
“Heck of a start. Heck of a start,” he said. “Sentry and this one are very, very different golf courses and very different golf, right. You still have to go low in both of them. So luckily the mentality is the same.”
Rahm has gone 27 under in each of two wins and had just three bogeys over four days at the AmEx.
After his win, he talked about how health, his swing and about how rookie Davis Thompson kept the pressure on.
JON RAHM: Body’s been feeling great. My swing’s been feeling really, really good. And it shows, right. Even when I’m saying I may not be as comfortable as I would like, I’m shooting 64s because everything is just firing when it needs to. I’m, in a weird way, glad that today went the way it went. I’ve enjoyed some runaway victories, I’ve enjoyed some comebacks, but today was certainly a struggle. Out of the five birdies I made, what is it, one, two, three of them were tap-ins and the other two were basically 6-footers. So that tells you the story. Didn’t really make much today, even though everything looked really good and a lot of them looked like any of them could have gone in. But kept battling. Davis played amazing golf today, even through some of the bad swings he had early on. He battled, he came back, made am amazing 6 on the 5th hole. Gave me a run. This is just golf, right. If I don’t make the putt on 14, if his ball goes in on 17, you never know what can happen. But luckily the scales tipped in my favor today and I got the win.
Q: You talked about putting a lot of great rolls on putts that didn’t go in. Looked like that was kind of the story today. Then you made two big putts on 14 and 16. Was that the story today, same as yesterday, good putting, just not going in?
JR: I can tell you there’s a few, I mean, on 5, 7, 8, 10, 15, 17 and 18, all of those putts were good. All of them looked like they were dead center with two feet to go and just at the end they just missed. Luckily, the one on 16 curled in. I made the one on 14 that I needed to not give up the lead. But that’s golf. Yesterday on the front nine I basically felt like I couldn’t miss for the first 14 holes. I mean, the hole looked as big as it could ever look. I can definitely say the first 54 holes some putts that weren’t as good as some of the rolls I put in today that definitely went in. That’s just golf. It is what it is. I wouldn’t know what to say. Usually it evens out somehow. My ball striking got better and my putting maybe not as good as I would have liked. But if I were to play at that level every single round, well, yeah, I would be winning by six or seven. That’s just not easy to do.
Q: You were playing well, you were hitting the ball well, you were putting the ball well and yet you’re tied.
JR: I’ve shot combined 54 under in the last two tournaments and won by a combined three shots. I don’t know what else to tell you. It’s not like I’m putting bad, right. It’s just they’re really good rolls that sometimes didn’t go in.
After that swing I put in on 5, those two swings, the tee shot and the 5-iron, I’m like, ‘Man, if I keep making swings like this, today could be a really low day.’ I kept making the swings, I just didn’t capitalize on those. But it was a fantastic round of golf, that’s all I can say. I knew some people were going to come out and shoot 62, 64, 65s and get close, but luckily we started with a cushion of shots and was able to end up ahead.
Q: After having a chance to play in the same group as Davis today, what were your impressions of the way he handles himself and the poise — it seemed, just looking at it, like he was awful cool for a rookie.
JR: He is. Yeah. But make no mistake, what you see and what he feels could be completely different things. We’re all nervous out there. You feel it. It’s just how you deal with it. First time in this situation, teeing off with the lead on Sunday in a PGA Tour event. I think he did a great job. He played good golf. It was just, I would say, two bad swings at the wrong time. And that was 5 and 16. One could say it was two holes where he was maybe trying to hit it a little bit hard, trying to get some extra distance. One cost him at least one shot and the one on 16 cost him half a shot. And that was the difference at the end.
Q: It just comes back to the idea that in this game the margin is incredibly slim.
JR: It is. I mean, we’re not — listen, we’re not only shooting these scores because the courses are easy. It’s just the average, the level of the average player keeps gets higher and higher. I would like to know in years past if you shoot 27 under how many of ’em you win by one. Not many. Most of the time you’re winning by a comfortable margin. So it goes to show how good everybody is getting. It’s a really good time for spectators and fans of the game. Because what’s more fun than to seeing people just make birdies after birdies and having an exciting game.
Q: Rory has spoken at times of how it can be almost easier mentally to chase No. 1 than staying at No. 1 and kind of the war in the mind of complacency trying to creep in at times. What’s your reaction to that and kind of how it feels as you’re chasing it as opposed to when you’ve been at No. 1?
JR: There’s definitely a difference. When you’re chasing, to an extent it’s almost easier. Because you have one option and that is to make birdies. When you’re leading, yes, you want to make birdies, but you don’t want to make stupid mistakes that are going to cost you a bogey. So it’s obviously a little bit more difficult. But I enjoy both of them. If I had to choose, obviously I would always like to have the lead because you always, you’re always out there and if you keep making birdies, he’s never going to catch you. So I would always rather be there. But those comeback wins are fun, man. When you go on a heater and get those birdies and then all of a sudden, bam, you’re leading the tournament and you win the tournament. It’s quite unique. But, yeah, if I had to choose I would rather lead. You learn a lot about yourself in 18 holes. Because it’s four to five hours of a lot of stress. You definitely learn about yourself a lot about yourself.
Jon Rahm putts on the fifth green during the final round of the 2023 American Express at Pete Dye Stadium Course in La Quinta, California. (Photo: Orlando Ramirez-USA TODAY Sports)
Q: In terms of your kind of season and the last few months, winning four of your last five worldwide starts, how would you contextualize your comfort level on the course this stretch and where it relates kind of in your career?
JR: I think today was about as comfortable as I’ve been in a long time on the golf course tee to green. I felt really in command of my swing. The only two mistakes were the tee shot on 1 and the tee shot on 13. The one on 13 was barely a miss. So I felt in command of my game. Made a lot of good swings out there. Always gave myself a lot of chances. Which sometimes you make and sometimes you don’t. Felt about as comfortable as can be. Every time I felt like this in the past I’ve ended up going on to win, just because it takes a lot of pressure off a lot of parts of my game knowing that basically I’m going to hit the shot that I’m envisioning. And that’s a really unique zone to put yourself in. That doesn’t happen as often as I wish. I wish I could be like that every single time that I know I’m going to stripe it into the middle of the fairway and hit the shot at the pin. But it doesn’t always happen. So I’m glad I enjoyed a day like that today.
Q: In terms of celebrating success, managing success and keeping striving forward, are there any other athletes or people in life that come to mind that you respect.
JR: So many. So many. That’s a very long list. One that in college got very dear to my heart, if we go outside of golf, was Kobe Bryant. I spent a lot of time listening to a lot of his interviews and videos, because I see a lot of similarities between us in the way we approach our craft. Because craft is the key word for Kobe. And having that obsessiveness that we both have over the game. It’s somebody to learn from, for sure. Work ethic beats talent every day of the week, period. And I like to think that I have a really hard work ethic and I put a lot of time in. Like I said all year last year, like at the end of the year, you’re seeing now, let’s say, the fruits of all the hard work that I’ve put in. Like I said, I felt like I was swinging really well last year, the results were just not happening. And they’re coming in a bunch right now. Other athletes. I’ve gotten pretty close with Michael Phelps. I’ve been able to ask him quite a few things and pick his brain. But he simplifies it a little bit. I guess when you’re the greatest in history in anything it seems easy, right. Personally, there’s been a few I’ve been able to meet. There’s two football players for the Cardinals, we’re in a group chat, that are complete golf nerds. One of this them is going to have a lot of time to play golf now, which is J.J. Watt, and Zach Ertz, who is now injured. I hope they were able to watch a round. Meeting them and see how they approach a game, even though I haven’t asked them a ton of questions, I observe and they are definitely an incredible inspiration how they do what they do. J.J. especially. To be a leader of a team, a captain and a force to be reckoned with on the field like he has been for so long. To still be as dedicated as he has been on, not only how much he had to eat, what he had to eat. Because, I mean, eating 10 dry chicken breasts a day has to get old very quickly. But he does for recovery and making sure his body’s healthy. Same with Zach. Both of ’em. It’s been really, really inspiring. I’ve learned a lot from both of ’em.
Q: You’ve talked a lot about how comfortable you feel in the American southwest. Arizona, California, obviously two wins here, two big wins at Torrey. Could you just talk about, was that just a matter of having gone to college in the American southwest or is it something else that turns you on out here?
JR: Having played college for Arizona State, we played a very large amount of our tournaments Arizona, California. Southern California especially. For some reason I’m just comfortable. Palm Springs, I mean, might as well be Scottsdale. It’s pretty much the same thing. So golf is very similar. But I wouldn’t know why. I think it’s because I grew up on poa annua greens. Southern California I feel really comfortable on. It’s something that feels really familiar. I think it’s probably because the success I had in college was followed and kind of led into the PGA Tour and I won in my first few events in California, right. Honestly, if we start counting from 2012 until now my percentage, I don’t know what it is exactly, we know about Torrey Pines. … it was probably because I’m just so comfortable. The lifestyle suits me. My wife and I love this part of the country. She’s happy, I’m happy, our kids are happy. It’s a lot easier to play golf.
Q: You talk about how the margins are pretty thin out here. You seem to be making the margins a little larger. Four wins in your last six tournaments. Despite what some computers might say, you seem to be the best player in the world right now. Do you feel like you can just maintain this or how much better can you get?
JR: In my mind I feel like I can get a lot better. I feel like that’s the mentality I should have. Again, I work very hard to do what I do. I could find mistakes in every single round I’ve played. Very few times I would say I’ve played a flawless round. Even though there’s a massive amount of positives, like the one massive positive is how good my wedge game was this week. The amount of tap-ins that I’ve had these four days is unlike anything I’ve ever had. If I had to put a MVP to something it’s that 56 and that 52 degree wedges were key. So if I can keep that going and the ball striking at the level that I know I can, I know I can get better. Again, it’s my job to try to do the best I can and so far I’m doing a pretty good job.
Q: [With] your ninth PGA Tour win you tie Seve [Ballesteros] for nine PGA Tour wins from the country of Spain. I know how much you look up to Seve. Just sort of your reaction to that.
JR: Are you counting his five majors as PGA Tour wins?
Q: Yes.
JR: Yeah, well, slight asterisk next to that one, right. (Laughing.) I mean, Seve didn’t play full-time PGA Tour, so the fact that he had nine wins is pretty spectacular. I’ve been fortunate to tie a lot of things he’s done and if I ever get to surpass some of those things it would be incredible. I’ve spoken many times, the reason why I play golf, not like motivation, meaning my dad started playing golf because of the ’97 Ryder Cup and Seve’s captaincy. That’s basically why I’m here. I asked my dad recently, If your friends hadn’t been down there to see that, what would we be doing? Who knows. I have no idea. That’s why I take representing golf in Spain so seriously and why Seve’s legacy is so important to me. When he started playing golf I think there were 30,000 people with a golf license in Spain. At the time he died it was over 350,000. So when I started playing I think it was three hundred something thousand. So I would love to be able to escalate that. I know it will be hard to do to the level that he did, but if I can increase that number and make golf more popular in Spain I’ll be a happy man.
Thompson’s 62 matches the first-round lead from the golf course last year
The story is about as old as the 64-year-old American Express PGA Tour event.
Someone goes to La Quinta Country Club and tears apart the front nine, only to hit a wall on the back nine. Rounds that seem destined to sniff 59 suddenly turn into solid but somehow disappointing rounds in the low 60s.
The story was repeated again Thursday, with Davis Thompson providing the drama. A brilliant 8-under 28 on the front nine at La Quinta, including back-to-back eagles on the par-5s at the fifth and sixth holes, was followed by a pedestrian 2-under 34 on the tougher back nine. The result was a 10-under 62 that pushed Thompson into the first-round tournament lead but left Thompson wanting more.
“That was kind of like my biggest challenge today was staying present-minded and trying to put one foot in front of the other,” said the 23-year-old Thompson, playing in the tournament for the first time after spending 2021-22 on the Korn Ferry Tour. “Your mind definitely starts to wander a little bit. But I played enough rounds to where I try to teach myself over and over you can’t get ahead of yourself.”
Sam Burns seemed on the verge of catching Thompson most of the afternoon, going 7 under through nine holes at the tougher Pete Dye Stadium Course at PGA West. But Burns also cooled off on his final nine holes, bogeying the 18th for a 64. That left Burns in a five-way tie for second place with Jon Rahm who played at La Quinta, Tyler Duncan, who played the Nicklaus Tournament Course at PGA West, Matti Schmid, who played the Stadium Course, and Taylor Montgomery, who shot his 64 at La Quinta.
Nine players finished at 65, including Southern California PGA section representative and PGA of America player of the year Michael Block, and world No. 6 Xander Schauffele.
Thompson’s 62 at La Quinta in the first round was hardly unique for the low-scoring American Express. Patrick Cantlay and Lee Hodges shot 62 in the first round on the course last year, and Phil Mickelson fired a 60 in the first round in 2019. Rahm shot 62 at La Quinta Country Club to start the 2018 event that he won.
If there was a surprise in Thompson’s round, it was that he had never played the course in competition. But he made sure to learn something about desert layouts before coming to La Quinta.
“I was able to come out here early before I went to Hawaii (the Sony Open) and played out here on the Nicklaus Course. So I was a little familiar with it,” said Thompson, who played in eight PGA Tour events in 2020-21 and in three more in 2021-22. “But just got off to a hot start and just kind of coasted on my way in. But it’s always good to see some putts go in early and give you confidence to just keep it rolling.”
Fast start at La Quinta
Thompson birdied three of the first four holes at La Quinta before hitting the scoring holes of the fifth and sixth, consecutive par-5s that are reachable for all the PGA Tour pros. He rolled in a 12-foot putt for eagle on the fifth hole, then missed the green in two on the sixth hole but chipped in from 60 feet for his second consecutive eagle to reach 7 under through six holes.
“I had good numbers on both those holes. I actually missed the green on 6 and chipped in,” Thompson said. “I put two good swings on it and had a really nice chip and a really good putt.”
But Thompson added just one more birdie on the front nine at the ninth hole, then made birdies on the 13th and 18th holes on the back nine to cap the 62.
Rahm, ranked fourth in the world and coming off a win at the Sentry Tournament of Champions two weeks ago, didn’t have the red-hot nine like Thompson or Burns. Instead, he opened with five birdies on his front nine, including birdies on the two par-5s. He then bogeyed the 10th hole but added three consecutive birdies after that. A birdie at 17 pushed him to 64 on a course he knows he must play well.
“Give me enough time, I’ll be picky about a lot of things,” Rahm said after the round. “But it’s a great start to the tournament. You can’t really win it on this golf course, but you can sure fall off the pace. It’s a great start, solid round of golf, great putting out there. Hopefully, I can keep that going the whole week and feel a little bit better tee to green.”
Rahm was part of a field of five of the top seven players in the world in the desert tournament this week, and those players all fought into contention. Schauffele’s 66 at La Quinta left him tied for sixth. Scottie Scheffler and Patrick Cantlay each shot 68, while Will Zalatoris shot 69. In all, 123 of the 156 pros in the field broke par-72.
Rahm admits he’s playing golf as well as anyone in the world right now.
“Very confident. I think it showed out there. I didn’t have my best. I didn’t find myself in the fairway very often through the round, but was able to get birdies out of it. And that’s the beauty of that,” Rahm said. “I mean I would like people to think that it’s hard to beat me and almost impossible because, again, if I don’t have my A game and I’m shooting rounds like this it should be a pretty good year.”
It’s hard to have a much better start to a round than Davis Thompson did Thursday during his first round of The American Express at La Quinta Country Club in California.
Thompson, a 23-year-old PGA Tour rookie, was 7 under after six holes, including a stretch of 6 under in four holes that featured consecutive eagles on the par-5 fifth and par-5 sixth.
Birdie. Par. Birdie. Eagle. Eagle. Birdie. That’s a lot of circles on the card to begin the day.
Thompson became the first player since Robert Streb at the 2021 CJ Cup to go 7 under in his first six holes. He’s also the first player with consecutive eagles in a round since Shane Lowry at the 2022 Open Championship at St. Andrews.
Davis Thompson becomes the first player to play the first six holes of a round in 7-under or better since Robert Streb in the first round of the 2021 CJ CUP (-7).
The last player to make back-to-back eagles on TOUR was Shane Lowry at the 2022 Open Championship (Nos. 9-10, R3). https://t.co/XUhMEwOxQI
In six starts this season, he has made five cuts and finished T-9 at the Fortinet Championship. However, his hot start had him out front early. Thompson shot 10-under 62.
Four golfers had three eagles in one round last season: Shane Lowry, Open Championship; Trey Mullinax, AT&T Byron Nelson; Stephan Jaeger, Mexico Open at Vidanta; Carlos Ortiz, WM Phoenix Open.
What’s the secret to La Quinta Country Club’s pristine greens?
LA QUINTA, Calif. — Long lauded for sporting some of the best playing conditions on the PGA Tour, historic La Quinta Country Club doesn’t rest on its roll.
With PGA Tour pros Jon Rahm, Patrick Cantlay, Brendan Steele and this year’s Ryder Cup captain Zach Johnson offering annual superlatives on the quality and consistency of the club’s putting surfaces, the turf team at La Quinta begins its tourney and peak-season member prep long before the first American Express ball is ever struck.
“For me, getting the greens ready to be seeded in the first week of October is the most important thing,” said Tim Putnam, director of agronomy at La Quinta Country Club. “Everything we do to create that surface that we seed into, that’s what I spend the most time worrying about and ensuring we get exactly right.”
This year’s 64th version of The American Express is far from Putnam’s first rodeo. A desert-area superintendent since the late 1990s, he began his tenure as La Quinta Country Club’s agronomy frontman in 2002. With the club preparing to co-host the PGA Tour’s annual stop in the desert for a 51st time, Putnam’s “secret sauce” for the condition of his greens once earned quality comparisons to the game’s most extolled putting surfaces at Augusta National Golf Club from Rahm during his 2018 victory in the desert.
The Lawrence Hughes design at La Quinta that opened in 1959 is considered “classic” beyond its time-tested, six-plus decades of play. With a dearth of distance by today’s tour standards (7,060 yards), combined with skinny corridors and an onus on iron accuracy, the scoring lens for professionals is most often focused on the flatstick.
“They may be some of the best surfaces I’ve ever seen,” said Scottie Scheffler, who is ranked second in the world golf ranking. “They’re really, really good. That’s consistent. It’s been like that — I think this is my fourth time here at this event — and they have been like that every time I’ve been over there.
“It’s pretty amazing what that superintendent and the club can do with those greens,” Scheffler said. “If you’re rolling it good — there’s a little bit of a pull there that can be tough to read at times — but once you start making a few putts that hole can look really big because those greens are nice.”
Manning a maintenance crew of two dozen employees across a relatively small turf footprint of 113 acres, Putnam’s purview is set upon every blade and each grain.
The La Quinta Country Club greens roll with Tifdwarf hybrid bermudagrass and are overseeded in October with a combination of poa trivialis and perennial ryegrass.
“The ryegrass really helps early on,” says Putnam, “and helps the Poa get established, provides a bit of shade for the Poa and helps with traffic stress.”
Per his autumn focus, Putnam’s overseed preparation includes growth regulators and verticutters working at very shallow heights.
“The key to me is getting rid of enough Bermuda tissue, so you’re creating a good seed bed,” Putnam said. “And using the verticutters to help lift up the Bermuda and get it to peel off better. And then I like to use something I stumbled upon a long time ago, a brush, called a Grain Master, and it’s got really stiff poly-bristles on it. When I drag that around, it stands the Bermuda up and also works great in conjunction with using Scythe on the putting surfaces to kind off burn off the green tissue of the Bermuda.”
As the course reopens from overseed and the calendar enters the holiday season, Putnam plans ahead.
“In December, I’ll have them running at a 10 ½ or 11 (on the Stimpmeter) for member play, and then heading into the AMEX, I really watch the weather,” the director of agronomy said. “If it’s going to be cool like it is now, I’ve got to be sure that they’re not too fast going into the tournament, because they won’t grow that much. And over the course of rolling the greens for five or six straight days (during the tournament week), they can get too fast.”
Around the start of the calendar year and the impending return of The American Express, Putnam and staff work a delicate dance of manning the speed of the greens. For the tournament, La Quinta’s greens actually run a shade slower than the 11 ½ (or even 12) Putnam measures on the Stimpmeter for member play the rest of the season.
Considering that, for uniform layout, pin placements remain the same across all three tournament courses for the first three rounds until every golfer has played each of the holes, Putnam needs to be additionally mindful of not making the setup too challenging for the event’s amateur players and keeping pace-of-play intact.
For American Express week, Putnam works in tandem with the PGA Tour’s agronomy staff to ensure his putting surfaces roll at similar speeds as the other two tournament courses at PGA West — the Nicklaus Tournament and Pete Dye Stadium courses.
“The tour wants the three courses to be as comparable as possible to each other, and speeds of about 11 are where they’ve settled in,” Putnam said. “Maybe a little closer to 10 ½ at PGA West, with those greens having a few bigger slopes.”
In addition to the speed of the putting greens, the PGA Tour staff also pays close attention to mower heights for continuity and quality.
“We were once mowing greens at about 100 or 115-thousandths of an inch – which was the height we needed to not exceed that 10 ½ speed – but if you had a putt that was rolling across multiple mow lines, there was a tiny bit of grain-effect with ball movement,” Putnam said. “So I showed that to the PGA Tour agronomist, and told him we really needed to be at 105-thousandths of an inch to avoid that phenomenon.”
January has been cooler than average in the Coachella Valley with only two daytime high temperatures warmer than 70 degrees this month. Because of the cooler conditions, Putnam looks to return to the 110 mow height along with adding another dollop of that secret sauce.
“Poa trivialis is interesting in that it really grows upright, whereas most grasses grow a bit more laterally,” he said. “With Poa triv (ialis), you’ll actually get grain from the mower. As the mower goes over, it lays it in one direction and then as the mower comes back, it lays it in the other direction. We came up with a process of using these little brushes on the mowers, and now we’ll actually mow against the grain, or, against the previous line. We’re trying to make the grass stand up straight everywhere.”
During the tournament, Putnam and his staff will stimp the greens both morning and afternoon, to ensure they’re not getting too fast.
“But I do want to be able to roll the greens every day,” he said, “because with the pins staying in the same place, there’s a lot of foot-printing around the hole.”
While Putnam appreciates the yearly accolades from the PGA professionals, he’s fast to acknowledge that the pristine conditions aren’t unique to just La Quinta Country Club but to a number of the desert’s 120 courses.
“There are a half-dozen courses out here in the valley whose greens are as good as mine,” he said. “And, for an entire area, the courses out here in our desert are in as good or better shape than anywhere in the country.”
Of course, Putnam is equally aware that the eyes of the nation are annually affixed on his terrain, expecting to view the perfect roll.
“When you see a close-up of a putt on TV, and the ball starts to slow down, I want to see it tracking on that same arc,” Putnam said. “That’s when I know I’ve got these greens going really good.”
StrackaLine offers hole-by-hole maps for the PGA Tour’s 2023 The American Express in California.
PGA West’s Pete Dye Stadium Course in La Quinta, California – one of three courses used for the PGA Tour’s 2023 The American Express – opened in 1986 with a design by the legendary architect whose name appears in the layout’s title.
The 7,187-yard, par-72 Stadium Course is the main track for this week’s event, hosting each player for one of the first three rounds as well as Sunday’s final round. The other two courses used in the first three rounds are La Quinta Country Club (7,060 yards, par 72) and PGA West’s Nicklaus Tournament Course (7,147 yards, par 72). All the players have one round on each course before the cut is made for Sunday’s final round.
Thanks to yardage books provided by StrackaLine – the maker of detailed yardage books for thousands of courses around the world – we can see exactly the challenges the pros face this week on the Stadium Course. Check out the maps of each hole below.
