TPC Southwind wasted little time reminding Scottie Scheffler that this is not a course where patience is optional. Scheffler finished his opening round at 2-under and currently sits T7, but his scorecard does not quite capture the push-and-pull of his day. He admitted he “didn’t feel like I hit a ton of fairways,” spending plenty of time in the first cut after tee shots caught overhanging trees. Still, he managed to hit plenty of greens, leaving him with a round that could have been better, but also one that could easily have been worse.

“I still hit a lot of greens not being in the fairway a bunch,” Scheffler told the press. That was where the course presented its first little trick. From one perspective, he felt he had gotten away with some loose driving. From another, he felt he had been unlucky not to turn good shots into more birdie chances.

“I hit a lot of good tee shots and iron shots and didn’t get a lot of close looks at birdie,” he explained. “I hit a lot of lips, I felt like, on the green. Could have been a lot better, could have been a lot worse, I don’t know.”

83% of our readers couldn't break par yesterday

Changing winds, tricky bunkers, and quirky breaks test every shot. Beat par, compare scores, and return tomorrow for a new challenge.

TEE OFF HERE↗

The numbers explain why a player of Scheffler’s quality can produce a 2-under round while still feeling there was considerably more available. TPC Southwind is a par-70 layout of roughly 7,200 yards, with 12 par-4s, four par-3s and just two par-5s. Its fairways average only 25 yards wide, while approximately 140 of the 220 acres are rough.

Get the Essentially Golf Newsletter. The pulse of today's golf world — daily news from fairways across the globe and tips to improve your game.

Water comes into play on 11 holes, and the course has 75 bunkers covering 105,000 square feet. Its greens average only 4,300 square feet, so there is not much room for players to miss before the next shot becomes considerably less pleasant. And Southwind is getting firmer.

Scheffler specifically pointed to the changing conditions, saying, “The rough is quite thick this year, and the greens are starting to firm up as well.”

That is an important combination on a course where missing the fairway can already leave players fighting their way back toward small targets. The recent renovation only adds to the equation. All 18 green complexes were rebuilt and resurfaced during the 2024-25 project, with additional green space recovered to create more pin positions, while the surrounds were returned to Zeon zoysia to provide firmer, better-draining playing surfaces.

So how do you survive it? Scheffler’s answer was refreshingly simple:
“You just can’t force it around here,” He explained. “When you’re hitting a lot of fairways and a lot of greens, you’re going to get a lot of looks. If you’re executing, you’re going to get rewarded.

“On certain holes when you don’t, you’re going to be punished pretty severely.”

That is perhaps the clearest description of TPC Southwind’s personality. It does not necessarily demand spectacular golf on every hole, but it relentlessly charges players for mistakes. Scheffler’s 2-under, T7 position shows he navigated that bargain reasonably well on Thursday.

Yet with thick rough, firming greens, narrow fairways, water on more than half the course, and small putting surfaces, his warning still stands: Southwind will give you birdies when you earn them, but it has no problem sending the bill when you don’t.