Detroit — For the last Rocket Classic, players are going to get their first glimpse of the new Detroit Golf Club.
Detroit Golf Club will show of its $16.1 million restoration project when the PGA Tour comes to town next week, for the eighth and final playing of the Rocket Classic. And while it remains to be seen how the many changes affect how the course plays, this much is certain: Birdies, while still plentiful, will be significantly more scarce.
Detroit Golf Club is going to play to a par 70 for the 2026 Rocket Classic, down from a par 72 for the first seven years, when the winning score ranged anywhere between 18 under par and 26 under par, the record set by Tony Finau in 2022. The winning score was 22 under last year, when Aldrich Potgieter won in a playoff.
The biggest changes as part of the restoration project, overseen by New Jersey-based architect Tyler Rae, involved the bunkers, which are deeper, and the greens, which are bigger. There also now is tall, wispy fescue grass, more length to the par 4s and more ditches that players must contend with on a historic Donald Ross course that, during the Rocket’s run, often has been criticized by fans and many in the media as being much too easy for players of PGA Tour-caliber.
“We put our heart and soul into this, and I hope it shows,” Rae said last month, during a media preview tour of the renovation — showing it off before the tournament course, the North Course, even opened for the membership.
“We think it’ll really test these players and really put on a show.”
There are three changes at DGC that will jump out most to golf fans.
For starters, the tournament course used to have four par 5s, and now there only will be two. The seventh and 17th holes have been transformed from short (by PGA Tour standards) par 5s to long par 4s.
The seventh hole played about 564 yards in 2025, and the 17th hole played about 575 yards. They both have consistently been among the easiest holes at the Rocket during the tournament’s first seven years. In 2025, the seventh hole played to an average of 4.388 strokes, the easiest hole on the course. During the four rounds, there were 273 birdies and more eagles (24) than bogeys or worse (21). Last year, the 17th hole played to an average of 4.415 strokes, the second-easiest hole. There were 266 birdies and again more eagles (16) than bogeys (15). That hole didn’t see a single double-bogey the entire week in 2025.
Potgieter, who went on to win his first PGA Tour event in a five-hole playoff over Max Greyserman and Chris Kirk, hit a 9 iron into 17 for his second shot twice in 2025.
“Which,” said Rae, “was disappointing.”
Last year, there were 2,167 birdies at the Rocket Classic, and nearly a quarter of them came on those two holes, which have played as the easiest and second-easiest holes every year of the tournament. There were 40 eagles in 2025, and two-thirds of them came on those two holes.
That will change in 2026, when the seventh hole plays as a 505-yard par 4 and the 17th hole plays as a 537-yard par 4 — likely positioning them to go from the two easiest holes on the course to two of the hardest. The seventh hole, especially, looks drastically different, with the removal of the big tree and the green moved far to the right of where it used to be. There now is a bailout area to the left of the new green, where the old green used to be. The tournament seventh hole actually has been converted to a par 4 for the membership, for whom DGC now plays par 71.
The changes now leave the tournament course with just two par 5s, which are likely to now become the two new easiest scoring holes for 2026: the fourth, which plays 592 yards, and the 14th, which plays 561 yards. The fourth and 14th holes played the fourth- and third-easiest, respectively, in 2025.
The 14th hole, though, also has undergone a major change, which will be the other difference most noticeable to fans. It’s been one of the signature holes of DGC during the Rocket’s run, anchoring the course’s “3-1-3” corridor that includes the par-3 15th and the par-4 16th. The 14th hole featured a large pond in front of the green.
But that pond, which had been the only water hazard on the entire course, is now gone — filled in by fescue, or native grass, that is a new and ever-present feature throughout the course, most prevalent surrounding ditches and bunkers. The fescue grass and the deeper bunkers should make the course, the flattest on the PGA Tour, pop better on TV (CBS broadcasts the weekend rounds), while also making it play at least modestly more difficult. Of the bunkers, Rae described them as “grander … sexier.”
“To see some final videos and pictures, and see the progression of kind of everything in, I mean, the golf course visually, I think, looks a lot better,” Rickie Fowler, who’s played in every Rocket and won in 2023, said in June.
“They did a great job of giving it some more character.”
Said Cameron Young, who is No. 3 in the Official World Golf Ranking, making him the highest-ranked player in the field for the 2026 Rocket, set for July 30-Aug. 2. “It looks really cool.”
The Rocket now will have four par 4s that play over 500 yards, including back-to-back at Nos. 6 and 7, and three other par 4s that will play just under 400 yards, at Nos. 2, 12 and 18. The 18th hole now will play more than 470 yards, up from 455 in 2025. The drive on the 18th hole, which Fowler birdied twice on Sunday in 2023 — once in regulation, then again in the playoff, to snap a long winless drought — is much more demanding, say those who have played it. Hitting fairways will, generally, be much more important than, say, when bomber Bryson DeChambeau hit it wherever he wanted in 2020, when he won by three shots and, afterward, sheepishly and hilariously apologized to long-dead “Mr. Ross.” Raised, expanded greens, which naturally shrunk over time, also will allow for more challenging pin positions.
DGC won’t exactly have fangs, but it shouldn’t be quite the pushover it’s been, especially in 2025, when Jake Knapp set the course record with an 11-under 61. The previous course record lasted less than 24 hours, shot by Kevin Roy and Potgieter a day earlier. Earlier that day, Min Woo Lee shot 63 to tie the previous course record. The winning score in the first seven years of the Rocket has averaged 22.3 under par.
The course officially will play 7,328 yards this year, down from 7,370 last year. But, again, that’s with two fewer par 5s.
“It will play probably a couple strokes harder,” Rae said. “Maybe two or three strokes harder.”
Detroit Golf Club members approved the $16.1 million restoration project to the North Course early in 2024, with the PGA Tour having some input on the plans back when it seemed like the Rocket and the PGA Tour had a long-term future in the shadows of Palmer Park. Ground was broken hours after the conclusion of the 2025 Rocket, late last June.
Now, as it turns out, the PGA Tour players’ first look at the new-look DGC will be their last. Last month, Rocket declined to exercise its option for 2027 and is ending its long run as a title sponsor on the PGA Tour after this year’s event. The PGA Tour has said it continues to explore options to return to the Metro Detroit market in the future, though that’s unlikely to happen at DGC, where the membership has fractured on the value of holding a PGA Tour tournament.
That doesn’t mean that the restoration project was all for naught. A big part of the project, including the pond removal and the return of cross-ditches, 4 to 6 feet deep, was to upgrade the course’s long-outdated irrigation infrastructure.
“We always meant for this to be for the members, and make this golf course as great as it could be for the members,” said Rae, who teamed with Sam Moynihan, director of agronomy, to bring the restoration project to reality.
“We’re really, really proud of the final product.”
Just in time for the final Rocket Classic.
Who’s playing in the 2026 Rocket Classic?
Rocket Classic commitments, as of July 22:
When is the 2026 Rocket Classic?
When: July 30-Aug. 2
Where: Detroit Golf Club
2025 champion: Aldrich Potgieter
Tickets: Starting at $68; children 15 and younger get in free with a ticketed adult. Details at RocketClassic.com.
tpaul@detroitnews.com
@tonypaul1984
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: How low will they go? Restored Detroit Golf Club to debut at Rocket
Reporting by Tony Paul, The Detroit News / The Detroit News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Tony Paul, The Detroit News | USA TODAY Network
