Jasen Vinlove-Imagn Images
Quail Hollow has been a staple on the PGA Tour for decades and will serve as the site of the PGA Championship for the second time this week. There aren’t many golfers who’d turn down the chance to play there, but former pro Hunter Mahan made it pretty clear he’s not a huge fan while harnessing the Kardashians to explain his beef with the course.
The vast majority of golfers will never be lucky enough to play on a course that has hosted a PGA Tour tournament, and that’s definitely the case with the Quail Hollow Club, the private institution that opened in Charlotte in 1959 and reportedly boasts an initiation fee of $100,000.
Quail Hollow, which was designed by George Cobb (the architect who was also responsible for the par-3 course at Augusta National), hosted its first PGA Tour event in 1979. It’s been the home of the annual Wells Fargo Championship since 2003, welcomed the Presidents Cup in 2022, and is currently gearing up for its second PGA Championship after the major was held there for the first time in 2017.
The track is best known for The Green Mile, the name given to its challenging last three holes. The entire club is certainly a sight to behold, but there are plenty of golf fans who’ve taken issue with the design of a course that’s repeatedly been altered in an attempt to adjust to the evolving nature of the sport but is still viewed as a fairly straightforward venue where most PGA Tour players don’t have to make a ton of tough or calculated decisions when it comes to navigating a round.
According to The Athletic, Hunter Mahan, the former PGA Tour pro who’s worked as a high school golf coach in Texas since leaving the circuit behind in 2021, is not the biggest fan of Quail Hollow based on how he described it ahead of the PGA Championship, saying:
“I guess I would say Quail Hollow is like a Kardashian. It’s very modern, beautiful and well-kept. But it lacks a soul or character.”
Some people may not agree with that particular assessment, but I have to give Mahan credit where credit is due for managing to figure out a way to succinctly sum up its essence (at least from his point of view) with one of the better metaphors I’ve come across in recent memory.