The novelist Vladimir Nabokov once said that “artistic originality has only its own self to copy,” and if we’re adapting that man’s words to the world of golf – I’m confident he would have hated this – we can say of the infamous “Green Mile” at Quail Hollow (holes 16, 17, and 18) that when it comes to sheer cruelty to the poor players at the PGA Championship, it has only itself for competition.
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Here’s what I mean: An ESPN graphic featuring some kind of woodland creature – sources say his name is Ez – noted on Thursday that in the past 10 years Quail Hollow had the hardest closing three-hole stretch of any major. That came in 2017, the last time the PGA was here, when players went a collective 488 over par on those holes over four rounds. Second place, the 2020 US Open at Winged Foot, was a good 53 strokes behind. In the ’17 PGA, the 16th, 17th, and 18th at Quail Hollow ranked third, fifth and first hardest, respectively. To measure how they’re living up to the hype this year, we can only compare to 2017.
As the first round wound to a close, with a few players still to complete their rounds, the Green Mile was once again taking a heavy toll. Take a look. (The vast majority of the penalties referenced are balls that went in the water.)
No.16: Par 4, 535 yards
2017: Fifth-hardest hole, 4.362 scoring average, 25 birdies, 29 doubles or worse, +166 relative to par, two penalties.
2025: Hardest hole, 4.434 scoring average, 1 birdie, 7 doubles or worse, +46 relative to par, six penalties.
Analysis: The 16th was an absolute merciless beast on Thursday and is in every way tracking to be way harder than it played in 2017. The two birdies for the day came when Aaron Rai holed out from the rough from 40 yards and Joaquin Niemann lasered his approach to two feet. What’s interesting is that in 2017, 16 played hardest by far in the first round, so that history combined with the fact that scores get better after the cut means we can probably expect some easing up here. (That’s probably true for all three holes.) One pretty wild stat is the number of penalties – two total through four rounds in 2017, but six already in 2025. You can ask Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy and Xander Schauffele all about that.
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No.17: Par 3, 227 yards 
Jared C. Tilton
2017: Fifth-hardest hole, 3.288 scoring average, 33 birdies, 31 doubles or worse, +132 relative to par, no penalty numbers.
2025: Third-hardest hole, 3.343 scoring average, 7 birdies, 4 doubles or worse, +36 relative par, six penalties.
Analysis: Here again, we see a hole trending worse than 2017, with fewer blow-ups but fewer birdies and wayyyy fewer pars. The GIR percentage on Thursday was an ungodly 36.11 percent, worse than any day in 2017, and the proximity to the hole of 60 feet was almost 20 feet worse than the cumulative average in 2017. It’s not quite 16, but it’s pretty terrible.
No.18: Par 5, 496 yards 
Warren Little
2017: Hardest hole, 4.414 scoring average, 30 birdies, 39 doubles or worse, +190 relative to par, 28 penalties.
2025: Fifth-hardest hole, 4.314 scoring average, 10 birdies, 8 doubles or worse, +32 relative to par, 10 penalties.
Analysis: This is the only hole on the Green Mile that is playing slightly easier than 2017, but it’s still a nightmare. A big difference here is that the hole got easier as the day went along, and despite a GIR percentage (40 percent) lower than 2017’s average (43.3 percent), there were fewer utter disasters, and the average putts (1.738) were lower than any single day in 2017. As with 16, the amount of penalties (mostly, if not all, water balls) are higher so far this year.
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Extrapolate all those relative to par numbers for four rounds and the Green Mile is currently projected to play at +456, which would fall short of the +488 number from 2017. But it would go down as the second-hardest closing stretch of the last decade. (And because the round isn’t complete as of this writing, it should actually get worse, not better, by day’s end.)
To truly paint a picture of the difficulty, though, consider this: As we publish, it’s more likely that a professional golfer has made a double-bogey or worse on these holes (18 of them total) than a birdie (17). On the rest of the course, there have been 35 doubles or worse, which means that these holes account for about 35 percent of all blow-ups on the day. The cumulative score relative to par on the Green Mile is +114, while on the rest of the course it totals out to +75.
This is all good news for people who love carnage: The Green Mile has not lost its teeth since the last PGA. Things can and will change based on conditions and hole locations, but we can be assured that this mean closing stretch will claim its share of victims over the next three days. Finishing out a tournament, or even a single round, is never easy, but at Quail Hollow and the Green Mile, it’s one of toughest tasks in professional golf.
