We have had quite a few comments recently about some of the pin placements. First off, there is no such thing as an "illegal" pin placement. I thought you might like to see what is written in the PGA Tournament Manual.

The USGA suggests that the area two to three feet around the cup should be in good condition. "Good Condition" is a clean area, i.e., free of ball marks, worn spots, old hole plugs or foreign growth. The area does not have to be perfectly level. It is recommended, although not a specific rule, that the hole should be cut at least five paces from the edge of the putting surface. When hole locations are set, try to keep the course "in balance" by setting flagsticks at a variety of locations on the greens over the entire course. It is best to avoid a situation where most of the holes are cut on the right, left, front or back of the greens. There should be a mix of locations. Six easy, six medium and six hard placements is a good standard. For multi-day events, the hole location difficulty should remain the same for each day. It is a fallacy that the course should either play progressively harder each day or that all hard hole locations should be saved for the final round.

It is on rare occasions that we actually set six difficult pin placements as recommended. We get hammered when we set one or two hard placements on the same day. Now, that being said, do we occasionally make a mistake by putting a pin in an extremely difficult place, of course. However, contrary to popular belief, we do not do this because we are in a bad mood or are just trying to upset our golfers. This time of year we are either going double tee or shotgun starts every day, which means our staff is changing the majority of the holes in the dark. Sometimes they pick a location (especially if we are asked to hold the easy locations for an upcoming event) that is on a slope that doesn’t look that bad in the dark, but is much more severe in the daylight than it originally looked. Changing the hole location after golfers have played the hole is not an option. Changing a hole location in the middle of any kind of a match is a big no-no.