Aronimink has been a pleasant surprise at the PGA Championship.
Many expected the players to eat this golf course alive, but the gusting wind and ensnaring rough have given players a whole host of problems over the first two days.
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Add that to the difficult pin placements the PGA of America gave to the players on day two, and scores were high on Friday.
But because of the difficult test, it took an age for players to navigate this golf course. 18 holes of golf took nearly six hours, a ridiculous length of time.
Aronimink didn’t do itself any favours on Friday by creating a bottleneck in the middle of the round.
Photo by Jamie Squire/Getty ImagesHow Aronimink created a bottleneck in the middle of the golf course
Aronimink put their pins on the very edge of most of their greens in order to give the players a challenge. By doing so, they inadvertently created a bottleneck which affected the pace of play.
The eighth and 10th greens are in very close proximity to each other, and the pins to each of the greens were placed facing the other green. That meant that players on the fairways had to wait for both greens to clear before hitting their approach shots.
It took twice as long for players to be able to hit their shots into both of those greens, which backed up the players waiting to play the eighth and the tenth.
This led to the comical situation of Rory McIlroy sat down on the 10th tee box with his eyes closed, patiently waiting for the fairway to clear in front of him.
While the pin placements created an incredible challenge for the players, this was a bit of an oversight with 156 players remaining in the field.
How Aronimink can learn from St Andrews with pin placements
St Andrews faces a similar issue to Aronimink. The Old Course has seven double greens, massive in scale, but they still require strategic pin placements.
To prevent bottlenecks and safety hazards, greenkeepers place the white flags (outbound holes) and red flags (inbound holes) at opposite ends of the putting surface.
This maximises the physical distances between the pins to ensures that groups putting out on one hole do not interfere with players approaching the other.
The pin placements are intentionally cut away from the natural transit routes between holes. St Andrews maintains a seamless flow, allowing groups to play simultaneously on the same green without overlapping or delaying each other.
Aronimink should learn from this on the weekend to speed up the pace of play.