Anyone who arrived at Quail Hollow for a practice on Monday would have been disappointed, except perhaps for the really big hitters.
The weather conditions were truly grotesque for the first practice day, which sadly meant that fans had to be turned away.
The good news is that brighter weather is forecast for the weekend. The bad news is, at least for shorter hitters, the course is going to be soft.
Rory McIlroy, who's already shown what he can do at Quail Hollow, is unlikely to lose much sleep over the conditions, nor will any of those players who hit a long ball off the tee.
With more rain forecast before the tournament gets underway on Thursday, the George Cobb-designed course is bound to play even longer than its 7,626 yards.
Predicting a winner is never easy, but surely these 20 players - the longest by average driving distance* - have a better chance of victory this week.
* Distances shown have been taken from the tour where the golfer played most of their rounds in the 2024 season.
Player |
Driving Average (yards) |
Bryson DeChambeau |
323.5 |
Joaquin Niemann |
322.5 |
Niklas Norgaard |
322.4 |
Marco Penge |
321.3 |
Rory McIlroy |
320.2 |
Jon Rahm |
318.7 |
David Puig |
318.2 |
Dean Burmester |
318.2 |
Rasmus Hojgaard |
316.1 |
Min Woo Lee |
314.8 |
Dustin Johnson |
314.4 |
Wyndham Clark |
314.0 |
Jhonattan Vegas |
313.9 |
Taylor Pendrith |
313.6 |
Eugenio Chacarra |
313.2 |
Gary Woodland |
313.1 |
Nicolai Hojgaard |
312.9 |
Brooks Koepka |
312.6 |
Keith Mitchell |
311.8 |
Max Greyserman |
311.0 |
To be clear: we're not suggesting for one minute that World No.1 Scottie Scheffler (2024 driving average 303.8 yards) and Messrs Thomas, Morikawa, Schauffele and Aberg won't have the muscle for a wet Quail Hollow this week, as clearly they, and a fair few others, have plenty of distance in the locker.
It would also be remiss of us not to mention accuracy. The tree-lined fairways at Quail Hollow make it important to find the short stuff, and players straying too far off line will not find recovery shots very easy.
However, being able to gain an extra 15-20 yards plus on the field off the tee could be quite an advantage on a sodden layout, especially on holes where fairway traps can be taken out of play - and there's a fair few of those.
So, it will be interesting to see how Niklas Norgaard fares this week. The Dane, winner of the DP World Tour's 2024 British Masters, has ranked inside the top-three for total driving distance in each of his three seasons.
However, he was ranked down at 136 for driving accuracy on the DP World last year, while Penge was even lower at 166.
It sounds simple, then - it's just a case of hitting it long and finding the fairway,
