With the Florida Swing taking the reins, the PGA TOUR arrives at the quarter pole of the season with this week’s Cognizant Classic in The Palm Beaches. It’s the ninth of 36 tournaments scheduled to determine the qualifiers for the FedExCup Playoffs.

The annual transition from the West Coast not only consists of the literal migration, but also it features more challenging tracks contested on a steady stream of Bermudagrass. Just as it has throughout the history of the FedExCup as the annual host, the Champion Course at PGA National Resort in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, dutifully checks both boxes.

A review of PGA National’s first spin as a par 71 last year, what’s new this week and more are detailed below.

Quirky things happened when PGA National debuted as a par 71 in 2024. Austin Eckroat captured his first PGA TOUR victory while establishing the new tournament course record in relation to par at 17-under 267. It’s just that he was one stroke higher than Chris Kirk’s tournament course record in the aggregate of 14-under 266 the previous year. Those pros don’t care if they split records because each owns his own trophy for taming The Bear Trap. More on that three-hole navigation in a moment.

For last year’s edition, the 10th hole was converted from a 508-yard par 4 to a 530-yard par 5. After ranking T118 among 616 par 4s played throughout the extended 2022-23 season with a scoring average of 4.164, it checked in as the sixth-easiest par 5 of 166 in 2024 at 4.232. However, overall scoring at PGA National dipped from 70.358 in 2023 to 70.097. Curious, indeed.

En route to his three-stroke breakthrough title, Eckroat played The Bear Trap – the 15th, 16th and 17th holes with respective pars of 3, 4 and 3 – in 1-under with two birdies, nine pars and one bogey. The mode to survive the stretch supersedes what can be confidence that leads to red numbers elsewhere. For the week, The Bear Trap collectively averaged +0.435 strokes with each hole over par individually.

This year, the par-5 10th is another 20 yards longer at 550 yards, as the back tee is engaged. It contributes to all of the increase to the overall course yardage of 7,167 yards. With water pretty much everywhere, drivers slide over to sit shotgun in favor of control and confidence from tee to green.

Also, for the first time in 11 years, the Bermudagrass fairways are overseeded, thus aligning with overseeded rough, which is trimmed to just 2¼ inches for the second straight year. Bermuda greens that are not overseeded and larger than average at 7,000 square feet are prepped to reach 12 feet on the Stimpmeter like usual.

Aside from potentially breezy Friday, Mother Nature seems content in essentially sitting this one out as an actor, and her absence isn’t insignificant at PGA National. The other three days present scorable conditions relative to the expected test. Daytime temperatures will rise into the 70s throughout and rain is not forecast.

When this opener of the Florida Swing concludes, the field for next week’s Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard will add the first available from both the Aon Next 10 and Aon Swing 5.

Rob Bolton's schedule

PGATOUR.COM's Rob Bolton previews and recaps every tournament from numerous perspectives. Look for his following contributions as scheduled.

MONDAY: Power Rankings
TUESDAY*: Fantasy Insider
SUNDAY: Payouts and Points, Qualifiers

*Rob is a member of the panel for PGATOUR.COM’s Expert Picks for PGA TOUR Fantasy Golf presented by PGA TOUR Superstore, which also publishes on Tuesday.