Livescore
The week started with Justin Thomas rapping on a table top to demonstrate how firm the new greens were at the Pete Dye Stadium Course at PGA West, and a 17-year-old newly minted pro using the word concrete in reference to those greens.
The week ended with the winner of The American Express saying he was spinning some iron shots on those greens and how the staff had set up the golf course so well. And somewhere, Pete Dye had to be smiling that his golf course can still stir up a little controversy among the best players in the world.
The one overriding story of the week at the 66th American Express was just how tough the Stadium Course was, particularly the greens and greenside bunkers that were renovated last summer. The idea was to return those greens complexes to what Dye wanted nearly 40 years ago.
From the start, the PGA Tour pros noticed the changes. Often the pros will be quiet about changes to golf courses or conditions at PGA Tour venues. That was not the case this week, with pros noticing not only what the average golfer would notice, but things that only top players would understand.
“They got some funky slopes on them,” Thomas said before the tournament. “They altered some greens more than others. You’re definitely going to see some questioned looks, I would say, after some putts. Just a lot of movement and very, very subtle movement versus kind of constant slope.”
While Blades Brown, the 17-year-old who made his pro debut at The American Express, said it would be interesting to play the Stadium Course after the softer greens at La Quinta Country Club, it was Tony Finau who said the firm greens would affect strategies.
“If you weren’t landing it in the first 10 yards of that (par-3 17th) green downwind, you aren’t holding the green, it was going in the water,” Finau said. “So it’s going to present some challenges this year that I think we haven’t dealt with years in the past.”
Okay, so the new greens will make the course tougher, and in turn make the tournament tougher. Right?
Well, maybe.
More: Steady Sepp: Sepp Straka wins American Express golf title by two shots
The numbers show that the Stadium Course was significantly tougher this year than last, with a 71.313 scoring average in 2025 compared to 69.148 just 12 months ago. By PGA Tour standards, that’s a huge difference. And the winning score for Sepp Straka this year was 25 under for 72 holes, four shots higher than Nick Dunlap’s 29 under in 2024.
But dig a little deeper, and the numbers are not as shocking. For instance, Straka fired a round of 8-under 64 on the Stadium Course in the second round. In the first round, when the greens were their firmest, there were a pair of 65s. Sunday, with some pretty tough pin placements on some of the greens that had been enlarged to their original size, there was still a 66 by Thomas that included a 31 on the front nine and four missing putts from 15 feet or less.
Straka’s closing 70 Sunday matched the closing-round 70 by Dunlap last year. And in a sense, Dunlap’s 29-under winning score was more about his 12-under 60 in the third round of the 2024 tournament, not how he torched the Stadium Course. In fact, Straka played his two rounds at the Stadium Course this year one shot lower than Dunlap did last year.
The point is this: Trying to toughen up a golf course for PGA Tour players is, in and of itself, tough. As the old PGA Tour slogan said: ‘These guys are good’. You can get firm greens and pin placements that are almost off the putting surface, but these guys will still find a way to make birdies and eagles. That’s why they are making thousands of dollars each week and millions in a year. They know how to score.
By Sunday, Straka said he had noticed the greens had calmed down.
“I felt the greens were a lot softer today than they were the second round when I played,” Straka said. “I actually spun a couple back up the hill on the front nine I think. That kind of caught me off guard a little bit.”
The numbers say the Stadium Course was much tougher this year, but take away a few blowup holes from some players (remember there was a 13 on the par-5 16th hole in the second round) and the golfers hardly wilted in the face of the renovated Pete Dye masterpiece.
And you can be assured that the players are already thinking about how to make more birdies on the Stadium Course in 2026.
Larry Bohannan is the golf writer for The Desert Sun. You can contact him at (760) 778-4633 or at larry.bohannan@desertsun.com. Follow him on Facebook or on Twitter at @larry_bohannan.
This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Pete Dye Stadium Course proved tougher for 2025 The American Express
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