2022 Shriners Children’s Open – TPC Summerlin – Course Preview

The PGA Tour heads west to Las Vegas for its annual stop at TPC Summerlin, home of the Shriners Children’s Open. Located about 20 minutes west of the Las Vegas Strip at the base of the Red Rock Canyon, TPC Summerlin is a desert parkland course that plays at around 2,700 feet of elevation. Known as one of the easiest courses on Tour, players will have to bring a “scoring” mindset from the first tee on Thursday, not just to be in the mix come Sunday, but also just to make the cut.

Compared to last week at the Sanderson Farms Championship, the level of competition takes a huge jump with 12 of the top 50 players in the world heading to Vegas. Overall, there is a very balanced upper-tier headlined by Patrick Cantlay, Max Homa and Sungjae Im. Ranked fourth in the world, Cantlay is one of the stalwarts of this event as he won his first PGA Tour victory here in 2018 and has had three other top-8 finishes since. His Presidents Cup teammate, Max Homa, who went undefeated at Quail Hollow will also return to action.

As for Im, he returns to Summerlin to defend his title two weeks after his own quality performance in the Presidents Cup. Joining him in Las Vegas will be more than half of his Presidents Cup teammates in Cam Davis, Si Woo Kim, Tom Kim, K.H. Lee, Mito Pereira, Taylor Pendrith and Christiaan Bezuidenhout. Five major champions are also included in the field along with more than a dozen players with connections to Las Vegas.

The Shriners Children’s Open has been a breakthrough event for many different players who earned their first Tour victory here including Tiger Woods. There will be 144 golfers in the field with 500 FedExCup points and a two-year PGA Tour exemption on the line. The cut line on Friday will include the top 65 and ties.

Course History

Las Vegas has hosted a PGA Tour event every year since 1983. Known by various titles, it was originally played over five rounds and on several different courses. The inaugural event in 1983 had the highest purse on Tour at $750,000. Then in 1991, architect Bobby Weed was asked to design a new course called TPC Summerlin with the help of player consultant, Fuzzy Zoeller.

Built as a Las Vegas desert oasis, the layout opened as the flagship amenity for the 22,500-acre Summerlin master planned community. Weed overcame many challenges in blending the golf course to the surrounding desert landscape. The Mojave Desert heat, along with the lack of water and soil created significant construction and operational challenges. Weed’s design team took significant steps to preserve natural wildlife habitats and native desert grasses.

Zoeller said the goals at Summerlin were simply “to give players clear targets from the tees, to allow them a chance to roll their approach shots onto the greens, and to keep the green undulations subtle.” The course was first played as an annual PGA Tour event in 1992 as the Las Vegas Invitational, In 1996, Tiger Woods won his first Tour victory there at the age of 20.

In 2018, all bunkers underwent strategic realignment, improved contouring, drainage, and new sand was installed. And then just this past April, the course was shut down until the event in October to allow for all fairways and greens to be re-grassed to newer improved varieties.

The Course

TPC Summerlin is a par-72, 7,255-yard layout that was carved from a spectacular swath of rugged desert terrain. The course meanders through desert arroyos and canyons and features all sorts of native bushes and cacti. The lush bentgrass greens, numerous bodies of water, and abundance of mesquite and pine trees provide a sharp visual contrast with the raw desert landscape.

TPC Summerlin is a considerably short desert parkland track that plays even less than its measured yardage due to 2,700 feet of elevation and typically firm fairways. Homes line the perimeter of the course and it features gentle elevation changes throughout with a good variety of downhill and uphill holes. The rocky desert areas are used as either forced carries off the tee or as hazards around the green complexes. There are 92 bunkers, which is the seventh most on Tour, along with only four holes with water danger.