Butterfield Bermuda Championship 2024: Course and current form stats

• Short coastal venue with extremely large greens

• Power 14/115.00 ready to contend again at Port Royal

• Lower 20/121.00 moving ever-closer to first PGA Tour title

Tournament and Course Notes

• From Mexico's west coast, the PGA Tour has travelled 2,800 miles east to reach the island of Bermuda. And for the sixth year in a row, the Butterfield Bermuda Championship will be staged at the spectacular Port Royal Golf Course.

For the second straight week, the players will be faced with some of the largest greens on the PGA Tour calendar. In 2023, Port Royal had the third largest putting surfaces on the schedule, with greens that averaged over 8,000 square feet.

• To counter that, the course was the shortest on last year's itinerary at 6,828 yards. Only three Tour layouts were less than 7,000 yards in length. This is a highly-rated public course with Bermuda grass greens and fairways. It can be stunning on a good day but windswept on a bad one;

• Port Royal has reasonably generous fairways, undulating greens and water hazards on four holes. Opened in 1970, the club is owned and run by the Bermuda Government which is a British Overseas Territory. It is also one of the most picturesque locations in professional golf, thanks to its views overlooking the North Atlantic Ocean.

• For six straight years from 2009, Port Royal staged the Grand Slam of Golf which was a 36-hole stroke play tournament contested by that year's four Major Championship winners. Since opening, Port Royal has undergone two renovations. The first was carried out by the original architect Robert Trent Jones in 1995, with Roger Rulewich leading the second facelift 13 years later at a cost of $14.5m.

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Good Current Form

Two-time PGA Tour winner Mackenzie Hughes 14/115.00 returns to action this week following a break of more than one month.

The 33-year-old Canadian just failed to qualify for the second FedEx Cup Play-Off event back in August, but since then has made his Presidents Cup debut, while his two Fall Series' appearances both yielded top-10 finishes. He makes his Port Royal debut this week.

Doug Ghim 17/118.00 continues to perform well, and has moved more than 50 spots up the World Ranking since the start of the Fall Series.

He registered a career-high PGA Tour finish of second in Las Vegas last month and posted another top-25 in Mexico over the weekend which moves him to No 90 in the world.

Good Course Form

Regarding players with a strong course history, then examine the stats of Patrick Rodgers 20/121.00, Seamus Power 14/115.00, Justin Lower 20/121.00 and Alex Smalley 40/141.00.

Rodgers is a four-time runner-up on Tour and has posted top-four finishes from his last two trips to Port Royal.

Power, meanwhile, is a former champion in Bermuda and has played solidly during the second half of 2024.

As a mid-range driver, the 37-year-old Irishman is likely to enjoy this shorter-than-average PGA Tour layout.

The 35-year-old Lower travels to Bermuda on the back of his best-ever PGA Tour finish.

A closing eagle in Mexico enabled him to cover the final 36 holes in 128 strokes, which left him tied-for-second, and just one stroke behind winner Justin Eckroat.

Lower, whose three Port Royal appearances have all produced T20s, is currently a career-high No 119 in the World Ranking.

Finally, Smalley might be worth an each-way shout.

The 28-year-old averages 68.00 for his 12 rounds at Port Royal and, at No 120 in the FedEx Cup standings, is just a few points away from securing his PGA Tour card for next year.

He has posted a brace of top-10s during 2024, most recently in Mississippi last month.

Stroke Averages

Lowest 10 At Port Royal (2019-23)
Average .... (Rounds)
67.25: Kevin Yu (8)
67.38: Ben Griffin (8)
67.50: Brendon Todd (10)
67.75: Justin Lower (12)
67.88: Tyson Alexander (8)
68.00: Adam Long (8)
68.00: Matti Schmid (8)
68.00: Alex Smalley (12)
68.25: Lanto Griffin (8)
68.33: Sean O`Hair (12)
Min. No. of Rounds = 10
Only those entered this week are included in table

Note: List Contains Leading Reserves

Check out form stats for this week's DP World Tour Championship in Dubai