Strange. If things keep going the way they are now, Ben Curtis will have four victories—two of which are Majors. He’s obviously a good golfer, but the Majors thing is just ridiculous compared to his regular tour performances.

Lets suppose he wins his second Major at age 31. He’ll be halfway to a Career Grand Slam with just four overall victories.

Compare: Davis Love has 19 victories and just one major. Jim Furyk has just one major. So do Justin Leonard and Fred Couples and Mike Weir.

If Curtis can step it up on such a difficult course, where is he the rest of the time?

While attending the PGA Championship, I took copious notes, as well as photos on the last practice day (you can see the photos of Oakland Hills). The edited version of these follows:

The Monster

A repeated story about the 90th PGA Championship centers around the difficulty of “The Monster.”

First, it’s long. And from the ground, many of the holes look longer than they are. Moreover, the distance is increased by elevated greens, and severe upslopes before the green on many holes.

Still, it’s not out of the range of better players. I saw David Toms—not anyone’s candidate for a long bomber—reach the green on the 593 yard par 5 in two—sending the shot over some trees in his way.

The second issue is with the greens. They’re small and tricky and many players cleary were frustrated. Each green has several terraces, and little undulations. But it wasn’t only that the putting was difficult, but also that the balls were rolling off the back into the rough.

Tom Lehman was talking to himself, as was Ernle Els and others.

The difficulty, however, was not of the PGA’s making, but rather one of history. The basics of the course, the approaches and the greens were designed by Donald Ross in 1917. The course surely was shorter in those days, allowing better players to hit to the greens with shorter irons. As I watched each group come through from the fifth hole’s grandstand, it occurred to me that all were hitting longer clubs than they would have preferred. None were hitting those high-drop-out-of-a-helicopter shots that tour players prefer.

Even more importantly, those small, tricky Donald Ross greens worked perfectly fine with the available strains of grass and the less sophisticated mowers of the day. I know that the grass on greens was left much longer on those days. I’d be willing to bet that the stimp on Donald Ross’ original designs was half of what it is at the PGA Championship.

The RBS Exhibit was taking photos of people with a lifesize cutout of Jack Nicklaus. They then gave you a card with a code number on it keyed to your photo. I was later able to retrieve the photo from the RBS website. Neat. The result is below:

Here are a few photos of my Wednesday trip to Oakland Hills for the 2008 PGA Championship.

I’m going to the PGA Championship for the next two days. Oakland Hills is about 45 minutes drive from GolfBlogger World Headquarters, so I can’t miss the opportunity.

Photos and commentary to come.