Pelican Bay, an LPGA site, is readying to welcome the seventh version of The Match.
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You’re acquainted with the celebrities. But what in regards to the stage? In preparation for the seventh iteration of The Match, Saturday’s primetime televised showdown pitting Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy in opposition to Justin Thomas and Jordan Spieth, listed below are 6 issues to know in regards to the Tampa-area host course, Pelican Golf Club.
1. It’s an LPGA cease
If the identify rings a bell, it is likely to be that you just’ve heard it on broadcasts earlier than. Since 2020, Pelican has been an LPGA cease. Originally often known as the Pelican Women’s Championship, it now goes by this mouthful: the ANNIKA pushed by Gainbridge at Pelican. A whole lot of letters come with quite a lot of {dollars}. The occasion additionally options the biggest purse the LPGA Tour gives, exterior of majors.
2. It was initially a Ross
A century in the past, no architect loomed bigger than Donald Ross. In 1925, 4 years earlier than he completed fabled Seminole, in Florida, Ross put the ultimate touches on what was then often known as the Belleview Biltmore Golf Club, which operated for the subsequent 9 a long time as a public-access course adjoining to a lodge of the identical identify. In 2009, the lodge shuttered and Beau Welling — who’s now Tiger’s lead design man — was introduced in for a redo. Finding little in the way in which of dependable historic documentation of Ross’s intent, Welling strived to revive the format’s Golden Age spirit. Though Pelican retains a lot of the unique routing, individuals who know the property confer with it as “Ross-inspired.”
3. There are echoes of Augusta
When Pelican landed an LPGA occasion, the membership’s co-owner, Dan Doyle Jr. cited the Masters as an inspiration. “The only way I could equate it would be, you’ve got the Masters, and they play it in Augusta every year,” Doyle Jr. told LPGA.com. “We want this to be the women’s version of the Masters.”
A lofty aim, however the membership has built-in parallels with Augusta, and never simply because Augusta National chairman Fred Ridley is a Pelican member (for the document, Pelican members put on blue blazers). The bunkers are sharped-edged and blinding white, crammed with the identical crushed quartz from Arkansas that Augusta makes use of.
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There are echoes, too, in the way in which that Pelican performs, in response to Golf Channel commentator and on-course reporter Kay Cockerill, who lined the ANNIKA occasion this 12 months. “There’s a good amount of room off the tee that allows you to rip it and try to cut corners,” Cockerill says. “The more serious defenses come around the greens, which have a lot of tilt and movement and play extremely fast.”
The inexperienced complexes are additionally protected by intently mown run-off areas that yield testy chips and pitches as restoration pictures. One notable distinction with the house of the Masters: While Augusta sits on rollicking land, with outstanding elevation modifications, the bottom at Pelican, Cockerill says, is generally “pancake-flat.”
4. There is not any scarcity of entertaining holes
The Match will use a modified 12-hole routing, performed in the next order from the Pelican scorecard: 1, 2, 3, 8, 9, 10, 14, 12, 15, 16, 17, 18. At least 5 of these holes will stage particular challenges (with proceeds going towards Hurricane Ian aid efforts), together with a $1.1 million closest-to-the-hole problem on the third, and a $750,000 one-club-challenge on the eighth (which can play because the 4th gap in the Match), a dogleg-left par-4 with {a partially} blind second shot to a protracted, skinny inexperienced.
5. You would possibly need to wager on an ace
There may also be a $2.5 million hole-in-one problem on Pelican’s twelfth gap, which can play because the eighth gap in the Match. At round 150 yards, taking part in over water to a inexperienced that angles away from the tee, this brief par-3 attracts frequent comparisons to the fabled twelfth gap at Augusta. But it yields the next share of holes-in-one. In the historical past of the Masters, there have been solely three aces on the twelfth. At the 2021 LPGA occasion at Pelican, three LPGA gamers aced the twelfth.
6. If it’s important to ask, you most likely can’t afford it
Pelican is located in the Tampa suburb of Belleair, a leafy space the place membership memberships don’t come low cost. Prospective members finest be able to pony up!
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