[Photo: Dom Furore]
There’s a lot to dissect out of the overnight news about the new-look PGA Tour. For many of us, the most exciting piece of news was that the Tour Championship would be determined by matchplay, and after 2027, the event would consist of a “rotation of prestigious courses, many of which the PGA Tour would play for the first time”, PGA Tour chief executive and newly named commissioner Brian Rolapp said.
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Initial reports stated courses like Pine Valley and Cypress Point as possibilities, which might be a little far-fetched. We decided we’d apply a little realism to the exercise and help identify some courses we’d love to see the tour consider for the new matchplay edition of the Tour Championship (assuming, of course, that it needs to remain in the United States).
Ohoopee Match Club 
Photo: Dom Furore
We’re not sure how tour players would react to the unconventional nature of this built-for-matchplay venue. But we’d love to see it. Three holes are listed on the scorecard, perhaps whimsically, as par 4½ instead of par 5s, and members and their guests can play different 18-hole routings across this 22-hole design. Of course, the club is super-private, and we’re not sure they’d be game to host a tour event… but Justin Thomas and Jordan Spieth have both talked about their epic trip to Ohoopee with a few other tour pros during COVID. So hopefully they’ve passed along the word that this would be the ideal venue for a matchplay Tour Championship.
Bandon Dunes 
Photo: Stephen Szurlej
Though the beloved six-course resort along the rugged Oregon coast has hosted numerous USGA championships, we concede it would be a bit of a logistical challenge to host a top tour event. That said, if we approach a matchplay tournament at Bandon as a made-for-TV spectacle rather than one with thousands of fans lining the fairways, the intrigue becomes clear. The format and course combinations to be used are endless. Mix it up. Perhaps mix in rounds on Bandon Dunes, Pacific Dunes and Bandon Trails. Hell, we’ve got a tie to break? Head over to The Preserve, a wild par-3 test typically reserved for sunset booze matches among the common folk.
We’re torn on which course takes the matchplay honours, but the drivable 16th hugging the coast at Bandon Dunes might tip the scale in the original layout’s favour. The PGA Tour matchplay isn’t supposed to be like any other week, and sending it out to Bandon and getting creative with the format would re-energise the tournament and showcase arguably the best golf resort in the US.
Inverness Club 
Photo: Fred Vuich/USGA
An old-school Donald Ross design that can tip out at 7,700 yards (7,041 metres), Inverness Club provides a compelling modern test on a historic layout that was restored by Andrew Green. Studying Ross’ original drawings and early photography, Green repositioned some putting surfaces, reworked bunkers and added three new holes that replaced ones designed by George and Tom Fazio in the 1970s. The result is a design that better reflects Ross’ vision and makes creative use of the unique topography, with humps and hollows creating plenty of interesting shots.
The four-time US Open host is ready to test the next generation of tour pros, having most recently held the 2021 Solheim Cup, which proved the layout’s matchplay merits and saw impressive fan turnout of more than 100,000 people. It’ll also host the 2033 US Amateur and the 2045 US Open – proving the trust already bestowed upon the historic club ranked 62nd in Golf Digest‘s most recent ranking of America’s 100 Greatest Courses.
Trinity Forest Golf Club 
One of golf’s great modern courses with a ton of width, options and strategic architecture can be found at Coore and Crenshaw’s Trinity Forest. It had a brief stint of hosting the AT&T Byron Nelson, but extremely hot weather in Dallas in May and a lack of sufficient infrastructure doomed the event. Perhaps a better time of year, and an event requiring a smaller footprint is the right combination to bring Trinity Forest back to the PGA Tour.
Medinah No.3 
The venerable Chicago design might be auditioning for the new Tour Championship when it hosts the 2026 Presidents Cup this September. Geoff Ogilvy, Mike Cocking and Ashley Mead’s work at Medinah No.3 earned Golf Digest’s Best Transformation honours for their work – re-instituting Medinah as one of America’s great championship tests. The work included three entirely new holes and the reinstitution of more angles and options with fewer trees to better challenge decision-making, which would once again make it a great matchplay layout, as it was for the 2012 Ryder Cup.
Whistling Straits (Straits) 
Pete Dye’s bold, in-your-face design philosophy lends itself to the risks and rewards of matchplay, especially at Whistling Straits, as shown with the entertaining – if uncompetitive – 2021 Ryder Cup. Remember that insane Jordan Spieth hacking flop shot from 12 feet below the green at the par-3 17th? It’s these recoveries that the Straits course – with its dramatic fall-offs and rugged bunkering – allows for, especially when players take on a little more trouble than they ordinarily would in strokeplay.
Pinehurst No.2
The Sandhills of North Carolina is one of the most popular golf regions in the world and is deserving of a regular tour stop. Sure, Pinehurst’s famed No.2 is one of the USGA’s anchor locations for its US Opens, hosting five in the next quarter-century – including in 2029 – but we’re greedy and want to see the world’s best navigate the diabolical tabletop greens on a regular basis. A strong matchplay course presents plenty of risk-reward opportunities, and while Pinehurst No.2 is pretty straightforward off the tee, pins tucked towards the edges of greens will require precise approach play to avoid testy chips.
We’ll take it a step further: we’d love to see an LPGA matchplay event contested the same week on any of the other venues: either the revamped No.4 course, the Tom Doak No.10 course or the soon-to-open Coore and Crenshaw-designed No.11 course. With fans being able to move from one course to the other, it would be a great opportunity to showcase both tours and arguably the two best Sandhills courses. Remember in 2014, Pinehurst No.2 successfully hosted the US Open and US Women’s Open in back-to-back weeks, so they’ll have a head start on logistics.
Eugene Country Club 
Scottie Scheffler helped his Texas Longhorns to the finals of the NCAA Championships at Eugene Country Club in 2016, so we’re betting he wouldn’t take issue with this idea. Oregon won that week, in what was a wild finish with the raucous home crowd, and overall, the course was praised for providing a fair and challenging test. A 2021 renovation made the course more thought-provoking through the shifting of tees, remodelling of bunkers, the expansion of greens that bring more hole locations into play and a renewed emphasis on using the unique ground contours and swales as more strategically influential factors. The towering Douglas fir trees still frame each hole and influence much of a golfer’s strategy from tee to green.
PGA National Resort (Champion) 
The Cognizant Classic has been a question mark on the PGA Tour schedule in recent years, and if that remains the case (though it’s confirmed for 2027), we’d love to see a return to matchplay at PGA National, site of the 1983 Ryder Cup. The layout would make for compelling matches in modern times – with the cliche but challenging, three-hole “Bear Trap” providing some tough pars while also offering birdie holes at the start and middle of the routing. It’s worth noting the resort has a new Match course, too, which might not work strategically but could make for some fun playoff solutions.
Scottsdale National 
Former Fazio associates Tim Jackson and David Kahn devised a fun routing with three par 5s, three par 4s and three par 3s on each nine – a perfect setup for matchplay. A heap of width and variety offers options off the tee, but precision is required into these undulating green complexes at the very private club owned by PXG founder Bob Parsons. To really spice things up, the tour could add a few holes (maybe for playoff purposes) on the dastardly Bad Little Nine.
The Lido
One of the most highly anticipated course openings of the modern era, The Lido will have course aficionados clamouring to play the recreation of the world-renowned Long Island course built by C.B. Macdonald. And what a thrill it would be to watch the world’s best tackle this strategic test. Tom Doak recreated every hump and bump from the legendary links by studying old imagery and capturing it in 3-D thanks to golf historian Peter Flory. Bringing a tour event here would shine the light on everything that makes course design such a fascinating pursuit and to Sand Valley, a destination helping to put Wisconsin at the top of any enthusiast’s bucket list.
Hamilton Farm Golf Club (Highlands) 
It’s clear the PGA Tour wants to get back into the New York City metro area, and we’d like to see a regular tour stop return to this golf-hungry market. Hamilton Farm, about 80 kilometres west of Manhattan, might be unknown to some, but the Dana Fry and Michael Hurdzan-designed Highlands course hosted the LPGA Tour’s matchplay event from 2010-2012. A 2022 renovation removed hundreds of trees to better show off the hilly 295-hectare property, which would make a great test for the world’s best. Our money would be on Liberty National being the go-to for the PGA Tour, but for matchplay specifically, Hamilton Farm would be a fun option.
Shadow Creek 
Shadow Creek has hosted a few big-time match play events recently – the first edition of “The Match” between Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson for that huge $US9 million payday. The LPGA Tour also visits the jaw-dropping Tom Fazio design for its only matchplay event. It’s a course that settles big-money wagers on a daily basis for the high-rollers of Vegas, with a great risk-reward par-5 16th, the picturesque par-3 17th and another par-5 finisher – so it’d be a proper host of a PGA Tour event, too, like it did in 2021 for the CJ Cup.
We’ve given our realistic hopes for where the tour could send its matchplay event, now indulge us in a little wishful thinking:
Photo: Carlos Amoedo
Cypress Point
We said at the top that a PGA Tour event here would be a little far-fetched. Is the iconic Alister MacKenzie coastal California layout long enough to host a tour event? Probably not. The course doesn’t sniff 7,000 yards/6,400 metres, but in matchplay, does it really matter how deep the pros are taking it? (For the record, the most recent matchplay host, Austin Country Club, plays only 7,100 yards at its longest and surrendered birdies by the dozen.) And PGA Tour committee members were certainly paying attention to the 2025 Walker Cup, which sufficiently challenged the best amateurs in the world who hit it miles. Here’s how our architecture editor emeritus, Ron Whitten, defends the course to naysayers who argue distance gains have rendered it defenceless.
“Certainly one way to play Cypress is the full-bore, take-dead-aim, grip-it-and-rip-it, bomb-and-gouge approach. But it’s also a course where finesse still matters, where course management is still rewarded. Yes, long bombers can go low at Cypress Point these days, but so can short-hitting, thoughtful players, who much like sailors in a storm tack their way around bunkers, trees, dunes and ocean coves. And when the winds come up, as they often do at Cypress, it’s the latter approach that’s likely to be more successful.”
A matchplay event is our best (and only) chance to see the top players compete on one of the world’s greatest courses, and though the exclusive private club might object to such exposure, it would help give the event the unique allure it needs to justify its place on the tour schedule. Wind blowing, sun setting, match on the line heading to the long par-3 16th, perhaps the most famous hole in golf? Decent TV.
Photo: Carlos Amoedo
National Golf Links of America
Sure, the criticism of Long Island golf fans has been loud since the conclusion of the US Open at Shinnecock Hills. But please, please… consider bringing the PGA Tour’s matchplay Tour Championship back to eastern Long Island and one of America’s most historic layouts. C.B. Macdonald set out to build a course that would not just take inspiration from the great courses of the UK and Europe but rival them. The result is a group of template holes – Road Hole, Eden, Redan and Sahara among them – that prove comparable, if not superior to their Old World originals. Though the course, tipping out just longer than 6,900 yards (6,309 metres), is not long enough by tour standards, it did hold up in hosting the 2013 Walker Cup. Throw in the coastal breeze on this exposed links, and we’re confident it would provide a strong matchplay test.
