Vijay Singh has blasted the PGA of America for the severity of the greens at the US PGA Championship at Oakland Hills two weeks ago. Singh went into the year's final major on the back of a victory at the previous weekend's WGC-Bridgestone Invitational but missed the cut at Oakland Hills and had long departed the Detroit course by the time Padraig Harrington completed his two-stroke victory.
"The PGA from tee to green was one of the best we play tee to green but the greens were a disgrace on a course that good," he said. "I think if the members were to play at the speed of the greens we played, they'd all quit. There would not be any members left.
"I don't know what the PGA was going for. I don't think they should have another golf tournament there if the greens are like that. Get someone to redesign the greens, they were a disaster."
Having also missed last week's cut in the Wyndham Championship at Sedgefield in Greensboro, North Carolina, the 45-year-old insisted he feels much more comfortable at this week's Barclays tournament playing a composite 7,319-yard, par-71 course featuring the best 18 holes at Ridgewood Country Club's three nine-hole layouts.
"We are playing a good golf course," added Singh. "Last week was okay, a decent golf course but this is what all the players really look forward to.
"Playing a golf course of this nature, the greens are smallish — you have to know what side of the green to hit at — but they are by no means flat. They are very playable. Players enjoy playing golf courses like this. I've never heard anybody say anything negative about this golf course.
"You have to bring the whole package here to play well, you can't just come here and think that you are going to hit the ball a long way and score well."
The Barclays, the first of four FedEx Cup events, sees 135 of the 144 eligible players hoping to finish among the top 120 in the standings come Sunday night and progress to next week's Deutsche Bank Championship in Boston.
A revamped points system for the PGA Tour's end-of-season competition's second year has been designed to give greater volatility in the standings and offer lower ranked players the chance to be better rewarded for strong finishes in each event.
It has had most golfers, including this week's highest-ranked player Kenny Perry, either scratching their heads or reaching for the calculator.
However Singh, a three-time winner of this US Dollar seven million event, claims he will play little attention to the complicated system and instead just concentrate on emerging victorious.
"My intention is to win the golf tournament, not to make or miss the cut, it's a totally different mindset," the Fijian said. "I haven't seen the points. I'm not worried about the points, I'm trying to win the golf tournament."
:quality(70)/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/YVIRIOZQ35EWRPZXR27KGMO6YU.png)