Most golf courses build their reputations over time. Fields Ranch East was handed its reputation before it opened. Before the gates swung wide, the course had already been awarded a Men's, a Women's and a Senior PGA Championship. Other modern courses have been groomed for majors, Chambers Bay and Erin Hills among them, but neither was given one before the course had even been seen. Fields Ranch East was asked to be great on faith. The faith came from a larger ambition. In 2018, PGA Frisco was announced as the new home of the PGA of America, and the plan was to build a world-class golf destination in partnership with Omni Hotels. Construction began in 2020. Gil Hanse designed the East Course, and Beau Welling designed the West. When the resort opened to the public in 2023, it did so with its first major championship, the Senior PGA, and Steve Stricker won it. The course was a championship venue from its first days. Hanse's assignment was a tall one: blend the challenge a major championship demands with the playability a resort course needs. His answer starts with width. The fairways at Fields Ranch East are wide, and there is ample space off the tee. That space is the course's kindness. Its cruelty waits just beyond it. Miss big and things turn dicey. The bunkers here are shaped as aggressively as anything Hanse has built, their pronounced noses creating deep, penalizing hazards. Around some of the greens they are especially severe, and even the best bunker players in the world will find it difficult to get up and down. A player hunting for a birdie finds that the lines of charm are often protected by these intimidating bunkers. The width lets you play safe. The bunkers make you pay for wanting more. The ground around the greens is where the course does its cleverest work. The surrounds work in tandem with that fairway width, so that some places are clearly worth reaching and others are not. The opening hole lays out the whole idea. It is a par five bending slightly right, with a bunker guarding the inside of the dogleg. The best angle into the green belongs to the player who hugs that bunker. The green is narrow and slopes from left to right, shedding shots that come in from the left, and it is difficult to hold even with a short shot. The player who lays up is not spared either. They have to place the ball where the first bounce of their approach will not come down hard and kick away to the right. Laying up still asks for a little more risk. That sort of thinking runs through the whole round, called up again and again by the shapes, orientation and contours of the greens. Fields Ranch East is a course you have to plan your way around. It is also a course that will likely give up low scores. With so much room off the tee, good players will find fairways easily, and if their approach play is dialed, scoring chances will come. But let either the drive or the approach get a little loose, and the round can grow quite difficult. When the ground is firm and the wind is up, the course should separate the player at their best from the one getting by on a B-game, or something worse. It was awarded its majors on a promise. Its fairways, bunkers and greens are how it keeps that promise.