PITTSFORD, N.Y. – Here's your first piece of advice for making PGA Championship picks this week: If you're diving into the analytics and trying to find trends from 2013, the last time Oak Hill Country Club played host to this event, you're doing it wrong.The East Course has the same name and remains on the same piece of property, but the similarities largely end there.”Basically, the only thing that's the same is that it's a par-70,” Jason Ballard, the club's head golf professional, told me last week on SiriusXM PGA Tour Radio.That's not hyperbole, either.bet365Bet $1+ on Any Golfer, Get $200 in Bonus Bets!Available in your state! New users only.“We've redone pretty much the whole golf course,” Ballard continued. “All of the green complexes have been rebuilt. Every single bunker has been rebuilt. We've taken out some trees over the course of time to give the golfers more playability off the tees and approaches into the greens.”It's going to be an exciting week. We're excited to debut the golf course to the world.”That word -'- might seem like a strange one to use for a course that was designed by Donald Ross and established 122 years ago, one that has held six men's major championships, three senior majors, two U.S. Amateurs and a Ryder Cup, but that's exactly how the home folks are viewing it this week.The memories of Jack Nicklaus' 17th career major title in 1980 and Europe's shocking victory over the United States in 1995 and Shaun Micheel's laser-like 7-iron in 2003 (which I still maintain would be considered one of the best shots in the game 's history if it had been struck by a more “worthy” protagonist, like Tiger Woods) and Jason Dufner's nonchalant straggle to the winner's circle will endure, but those expecting the same track are going to be in for a surprise.Based on early returns, Oak Hill sounds like it could play as a PGA Championship/U.S. Open hybrid this week, which is to say, not quite as scorable as other recent venues for the former and not quite as difficult as other host courses for the latter.Perhaps more to the point, the rough is juicy enough to look like a U.S. Open. However, unlike the year's third major where essentially every player is going to miss fairways and only the strongest have a chance from the thick stuff, there will be more opportunities to keep it in the short grass. That's key that Ballard immediately mentioned when I asked what type of player should find success here.All of which gets us to the usual pre-major rhetoric when considering a potential winner: We'l l want to identify somebody who can hit it long and straight off the tee, dials in his irons, owns a deft wedge game just in case he misses greens and can get exceedingly hot with the putter.Sounds easy enough.Let's get to the PGA Championship picks, starting with a player just a few notches below the favorites who's been checking most of those aforementioned boxes throughout this year.
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