Course Preview and Fits: Bank of Utah Championship

The FedEx Cup fall rolls on this week in southern Utah, with the Bank of Utah Championship returning to Black Desert Resort in Ivins for its third playing. It is a 120-man field chasing a $6 million purse and 500 FedEx Cup points, and for a good portion of the field, the week is as much about 2027 status as it is the trophy. Not a single player from the world’s top 25 is in attendance, and Michael Brennan, who defends after winning here on a sponsor exemption last year, is the highest-ranked player in the field at 32nd.

The Course:

Black Desert plays as a par 71 at 7,421 yards, with three par 5s, four par 3s, and 11 par 4s. It was the final design of Tom Weiskopf, who died in 2022 before it was finished, and his partner Phil Smith saw it through, with the front nine opening that November and the back nine in May of 2023. The whole routing was dynamited out of an old lava flow on the edge of Snow Canyon and capped with sand, so nearly every fairway is lined with black basalt rather than trees or thick grass. The fairways are bentgrass, the greens are bentgrass averaging around 7,000 square feet, and the rough is Kentucky bluegrass cut to just two inches. At 3,100 feet of elevation, the ball carries about 6% farther than at sea level, so the card plays closer to 7,000 yards in practice. The par 3s show it best. They run from 151 to 202 yards, average the shortest one-shotters in our data, and have played as the second-easiest par 3s on Tour.