The TOUR Insider: Why Florida is harder than ever

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Tough courses, swaying palms and the game's top players make the Florida Swing a must-see event.

Mar. 4, 2009
By Craig Dolch, PGATOUR.COM Correspondent

PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. -- Ah, the Florida Swing.

The name conjures images of swaying palms, plenty of sunscreen and even more birdies. Where else in March can a player shoot the temperature?

For a long stretch, the PGA TOUR's Florida Swing had become akin to baseball's spring training, minus the leisure games of pepper and the jogs in the outfield during the middle of the game.

But a few years ago, the tone of the Florida Swing changed. It went from facing batting-practice pitching to trying to fight off a Josh Beckett fastball on the hands.

"There's certainly not as many birdies being made in the Florida Swing as there was a few years ago," said David Toms, who has 12 PGA TOUR wins and a major -- but none in Florida. "They've made the courses a lot more difficult."

Lately, the Florida Swing -- which begins this week with The Honda Classic at PGA National -- has become tougher than a $4.99 steak. The greens are faster, the rough is deeper and the scores are higher.

The recent numbers are a little mind-numbing.

• At The Honda Classic, the average winning score from 1997-2006 was 16.1 strokes under par. But since moving to the Champion Course -- which hosted the 1983 Ryder Cup and the 1987 PGA Championship -- it took 4-under to get into a playoff in 2007 and last year Ernie Els won at six-under.

• At next week's World Golf Championships-CA Championship, the Blue Monster is once again lurking at Doral Resort & Spa in Miami. After a decade in which the average winning score was 17.3 under par, the average the last two years was 13.5 under par. And it would have been lower for two reasons: 1. Rains softened the layout last year, when Geoff Ogilvy won at 17-under; 2) The field includes only the world's top 70-something players in the invitation-only event.

• In the first six years of The Transitions Championship at Innisbrook, the winner averaged 13.7 under par. The last two tournaments have been won with scores of 10- and four-under.

• Arnold Palmer continues to tighten the screws at Bay Hill for his invitational event. Tiger Woods won at 10-under last season, a year after Vijay Singh won at eight-under. By comparison, it took an average of 15.3 under par to win the previous 10 tournaments.

Not convinced the Florida Swing hasn't become more difficult than trigonometry?

Throw out the four majors, and the Florida Swing boasted two of the six-most-difficult courses on the PGA TOUR last year -- Innisbrook's Copperhead was No. 8 with an average score of 1.97 over par and The Champ was ninth at 1.825 over par.

Both courses played more difficult than, ahem, Augusta National (1.773 over par).

Bay Hill was 18th at 0.940 over par. The Florida Swing also had two of the TOUR's 15 most-difficult holes in 2008: The par-4 sixth hole at the Champion was 11th (4.444) and the par-4 16th at Copperhead was 15th (4.419).

So much for any concerns that moving THE PLAYERS Championship into May would leave the Florida Swing without its toughness.

Some may point out the courses are playing harder because par has been reduced from 72 to 70 at Honda and Bay Hill. But, hey, par is par. And most pros like it when par becomes a more meaningful score.

"It's nice to actually play some tough courses where you have to play," said Woody Austin, a longtime Tampa resident. "You don't have to just hit it."

This degree of difficulty is why The Honda Classic field has been enhanced the last two years with world-class players such as Els, Sergio Garcia, Rory McIlroy, Camilo Villegas and Justin Rose showing up. They know this course will help sharpen their games as they prepare for next month's Masters.

"I enjoy a course that's a tough challenge and a good test," Rose said. "When you get a low winning score (relative to par) at a regular TOUR event, that's an attraction."

Maybe not as fun as, say, Disney World or Universal Studios. But the Florida Swing clearly is no longer a game of limbo -- how low can you go?

So grab some sunscreen and a hat, find a spot under a palm tree and watch a month's worth of the world's best golf. As one-time Inverrary Classic host Jackie Gleason so aptly put it years ago .... "And away we go!"