River Highlands: Course that provides for odd scoring patterns

From pgatour.com

TPC River Highlands, site of this week’s Travellers Championship in Connecticut isn’t the hardest course on the PGA Tour.

It’s also not the easiest, which raises the question, why have there been so many remarkable scoring performances there over the last dozen years?

The course is part of the PGA Tour’s TPC network that includes TPC Sawgrass (The Players) in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, and TPC Scottsdale, home of the Waste Management Phoenix Open in Arizona.

It has been the host of the Travellers Championship since 1984 when the course was known as the TPC of Connecticut. A rebranding took place in 1991, to its current name that describes the landscape and water features.

The Hartford course opened as Middletown Golf Club in 1928. In 1934, it became the Edgewood Country Club until the PGA Tour bought the property in 1983 and hired famed architect Pete Dye to redesign the course to TPC standards so it could host a PGA Tour event.

Special stuff

Since then, TPC River Highlands has had a knack for being the place for some very special rounds.

Yet, in the last 10 years, the course has been right in the middle when it comes to the Tour’s toughest-course rankings, averaging as the 27th-hardest of some 50-odd courses on the Tour each season.

So, while not everybody is slaying the course, some certainly are.

In the 36 times it has hosted the Travellers Championship, there have been several remarkable scoring feats, led by Jim Furyk’s 58 in the final round of the 2016 Championship, the lowest score in PGA Tour history.

The course yielded a 60 to UCLA’s Patrick Cantlay, in 2011 still the Tour’s lowest 18-hole score by an amateur.

Birdie run

River Highlands has also witnessed five different 61s and a PGA Tour record seven consecutive birdies by Kevin Streelman to finish his tournament and secure victory in 2014.

It’s also not just one-round dominance. In the Tour’s history, only 10 players have enjoyed lower 72-hole scores than the 258 Kenny Perry shot when he won the 2009 Travellers.

Furyk thinks he knows why so many historic rounds have occurred at the course.

“It’s a very liked golf course on the PGA Tour, and a lot of players love coming here to play. I think one of the reasons why is they say that it really doesn’t favour (one) style,” says Furyk.

“You’ve got a guy like Bubba (Watson, winner in 2010, 2015 and 2018), who bombs it, and he loves the golf course, and then you’ve got guys who are much shorter hitters.

“I think the fact that it doesn’t weed out a bunch of players is the reason folks like it.”

Record-breaker

While subscribing to that theory, Furyk was admittedly surprised his 58 came at River Highlands, a course he had only played twice — in 2001 and 2011 — prior to his record-breaking performance in his third visit to the property.

“It’s funny, my two lowest rounds ever on the PGA Tour are places that I’m not ultimately the most comfortable, if that makes sense,” said Furyk, noting his next-lowest 18-hole score, a 59, came at Conway Farms, at the 2013 BMW Championship outside Chicago.

The last of Streelman’s two Tour titles was at the Travellers Championship. Entering the final nine at TPC River Highlands, what he calls his “favorite nine holes on the PGA Tour,” Streelman trailed by seven shots.

Because he enjoys those nine holes so much, he said he never felt out of contention and the seven consecutive birdies to finish gave him a one-stroke win over South Korea’s K.J. Choi and Spain’s Sergio Garcia.

“I love this back nine. I just kind of felt at peace this week that I was going to go have fun and enjoy it, and you know, to do what we did was pretty amazing,” Streelman added.

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