ATLANTA \u2014 Part of the changes the PGA Tour initiated at this Tour Championship \u2014 with most focused on the end of the starting-strokes era \u2014 was to make East Lake Golf Club a more demanding test.<\/p>\n
Mother Nature had other plans.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn response to data indicating fans want to see winning scores closer to par, the PGA Tour rules committee will adjust its course setup approach to encourage more risk\/reward moments throughout each round, further heightening the drama and competition to determine the FedExCup champion,\u201d this month\u2019s Greensheet, which is sent directly to players, read.<\/p>\n
The newsletter went on to explain that target green speeds at East Lake were 13 \u00bd on the Stimpmeter and the primary rough height would be 3 \u00bd inches, a half-inch more than in past years.<\/p>\n
Daily thunderstorms and torrential rain have largely kept that toughening at bay with the field on pace to match last year\u2019s winning total, sans starting strokes, which would have been 22 under by Collin Morikawa.<\/p>\n
Preferred lies have been in place for all three rounds.<\/p>\n
\u201cDefinitely a couple pins that were a little more towards corners. If you compare to last year, just with conditions right now, flags barely moving and it\u2019s rained a lot over the last day, so things that you can\u2019t control,\u201d Morikawa said. \u201cIt\u2019s just Mother Nature. When conditions are like that, we\u2019re going to be firing at pins. That\u2019s just the nature of what we do.<\/p>\n
\u201cLift, clean and place, you\u2019ve got a lot of wedges on this golf course. Can\u2019t really do much to tuck them away because even if you do tuck them in corners, we\u2019re firing away with a wedge.\u201d<\/p>\n
Last year, East Lake played to a 68.61 average as a par 71 compared to this year\u2019s 67.87 average as a par 70.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ATLANTA \u2014 Part of the changes the PGA Tour initiated at this Tour Championship \u2014 with most focused…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":89725,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[5904,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-89724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-golf","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89724"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89724\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}