East Lake Golf Club received an extensive renovation over the last year and players in the field for this week’s 2024 Tour Championship have had to re-learn a golf course they’ve gotten used to playing a certain way.
Thanks to a few changes throughout the routing, players were considering hitting down other fairways to create better angles into greens.
For example, world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler said he was considering playing his tee shot on the par-5 18th down the 10th fairway to make the hole more manageable.
“It seems like a safer play to take all that out of play, hit it down 10,” Scheffler said. “The green is going to be pretty extraordinarily hard to hold anyways with it being a downslope and having a long club in there. It’s more you’re playing for birdies. There is less opportunity I think for eagle than there was before.”
Tour Championship: Thursday tee times | Picks to win | Staggered start
On Wednesday, the PGA Tour made sure that strategy was no longer possible.
“For the safety of spectators, players, caddies and everyone on property at East Lake Golf Club, the PGA Tour Rules Committee has established two internal boundaries for this week’s Tour Championship,” the Tour said in a statement. “The fairway on No. 7 is out of bounds during play of No. 6, and the fairway on No. 10 is out of bounds during play of No. 18.”
According to Chief Referee Gary Young, “This decision was made primarily out of safety concerns, specifically to prevent players from effectively putting people in harm’s way by taking an alternate route. When it sounds like that is going to be a possibility, it necessitates an internal boundary.”
The first round of the Tour Championship gets underway at 11:16 a.m. ET Thursday with Justin Thomas and Christiaan Bezuidenhout. Scheffler will start at 10 under and two shots ahead of Xander Schauffele. The field of 30 is battling for a $25 million first-place prize.