Altitude of Cherry Hills offers unique challenges

CHERRY HILLS VILLAGE, Colo. – The thin air of the Mile High City is conducive to the long ball. Just ask anyone who takes the mound at nearby Coors Field (before a humidor was installed to make the baseballs less lively). The PGA TOUR is near Denver this week for the BMW Championship, but it won’t be “bombs away” for the 69-man field. 

Cherry Hills, which was completed in 1923, is a classic design with defenses against long drives. Fairway bunkers are angled to infringe upon the fairway as one gets farther from the tee. Some severely sloped greens – we are at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, after all – require players to put the ball in the fairway in order to control their approach shots.

“This course doesn’t really allow you to hit it that far,” said Rory McIlroy, No. 2 in the FedExCup. “There’s not many opportunities where you can just hit driver and see how far it goes. You really need to place the ball in fairway here.”

With that being said, McIlroy did hit a 3-wood 370 yards in Wednesday’s pro-am. He reached the 526-yard, par-4 fifth hole with 3-wood and 8-iron. The general rule is that the ball travels 10 percent farther here than at sea level. That number can vary with the temperature, though. The ball can travel even farther in the mid-afternoon heat and shorter in the cool of the mornings and evenings. The thermometer can shift some 20 degrees during the day, from the mid-50s in the morning to the 80s in the afternoon. McIlroy said his high trajectory causes the ball to travel 15 percent farther. 

“It becomes a little bit of a math game,” Rickie Fowler said. “You just need to trust your numbers.”

There’s another number on players’ minds: 30. That's because the top 30 players will advance to next week’s TOUR Championship by Coca-Cola. There will be plenty of FedExCup calculations come Sunday, when players and media try to see who will advance to the season finale.

MORE: Featured Groups/Tee times | Expert Picks | Power Rankings | Fantasy Insider | FEDEXCUP: Scenarios | Standings

The altitude adds another step in the pre-shot calculations of players and caddies. They’ll have to make a quick adjustment. Most were near Boston on Monday for the final round of the Deutsche Bank Championship, then traveled two time zones west to arrive in Denver, where play begins Thursday.

Trackman can help players learn how far their shots travel here. Yardage books make it easier to navigate the new course. Only a handful of players here have previously competed at Cherry Hills, though. The 1985 PGA Championship was the last time the PGA TOUR came here.

“I like the challenge of a new course,” said Graeme McDowell, who didn’t play the Deutsche Bank because of the birth of his first daughter. He arrived at Cherry Hills on Monday, a day earlier than most of his peers. “I kind of feel like it appeals to my sort of analytical strategic kind of mind.

“I like to come out here and see a challenge like this one where it’s not as straightforward as some of the courses we play.”

Hideki Matsuyama and Jordan Spieth played the U.S. Amateur here just two years ago. Matsuyama missed the stroke-play cut, while Spieth lost in the first round to reigning NCAA champion Thomas Pieters. Spieth’s caddie, Michael Greller, has carried the bag for six competitive rounds here; he looped for current Web.com Tour player Justin Thomas when Thomas made the semifinals here two years ago.

Morgan Hoffmann and Cameron Tringale played the Palmer Cup, a collegiate match between the United States and Europe, here in 2009.

Spieth said the course is playing similar to two years ago. 

“I would consider that an advantage for me,” Spieth said. “There’s a lot of risk-reward. There are a couple holes that are good holes for guys who can carry it really far. But the majority is really fair. The farther you want to hit it, the narrower it is going to get.”

Players will have a lot of options off the tees. Laying back often allows players to hit to wider portions of the fairways. Being aggressive allows players to take advantage of the altitude, but will also make it harder to hit the firm fairways.

“(The course) is whatever you want it to be,” said Jimmy Walker, No. 4 in the FedExCup. “If you want to take that attack mode, and go get after it, you can push it down there as far as you can. It’s a good blend of golf.”

McDowell said the winning score this week could be anywhere between 20 and 10 under par, depending on how firm the golf course gets. Cherry Hills will play as a 7,352-yard, par-70.

There will be plenty of birdies on the first seven holes. Nos. 1 and 3 are drivable par-4s, and players will have wedges into a couple other par-4s in that stretch. McIlroy predicted some 63s and 64s this week, but not much lower.

“There’s probably going to be a few guys who get off to good starts this week who will be thinking of (59),” McIlroy said. “But then the back nine has some difficult holes and I think it will be tough … to keep your round going.”

Both of the course’s par-5s are on the back nine, including the famed island-green 17th, where Ben Hogan’s challenge came to an end in the 1960 U.S. Open. Players must carry a set of cross bunkers with their tee shot to reach the green in two shots. The uphill 18th is a 477-yard, par-4 with a fairway that slopes severely right-to-left toward a lake.

Whoever walks up that finishing hole victorious on Sunday will have mastered Cherry Hills’ architectural intricacies and made the proper altitudinal adjustments. There are a lot of new challenges this week, but one thing remains the same.

“It’s just a matter of showing up and executing and hitting a golf shot,” Walker said.