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Craig Sweet

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Re:Medinah- The Emperor With no Clothes
« Reply #50 on: August 20, 2006, 10:10:04 PM »
Ryan...the green speeds...I am just quoting someone who was out there when they were mowed and stimped...perhaps he was full of shit.
We are no longer a country of laws.

Doug Siebert

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Re:Medinah- The Emperor With no Clothes
« Reply #51 on: August 21, 2006, 02:35:53 AM »
Ryan,
   Given your knowledge of the course, I am curious if you think the pro's would need any creativity even if the course was in the most perfect maintenance meld you can imagine?
   When I was in Chicago last week the guys I golfed with said they play Medinah occasionally to see how well they are playing and the course kicks their butts. So for most golfers Medinah is all the test most golfers need.
    The super or someone missed the mark with course prep, but I am enjoying the tournament and hope we get a contest tomorrow.


But there's nothing special about Medinah's architecture that makes it hard for most golfers.  Its long, with narrow fairways and thick rough.  You can take almost any course in the world, regardless of architectural merit or lack of same, and if you stretch it to 7500+ yards, have fairways 25 yards wide and thick juicy 5" rough and that's all you need to make it a punishing test for 99.8% of golfers.  You could cut down every tree at Medinah and fill in all the bunkers and the length, narrow fairways and thick rough will still make it too much for almost anyone.  The architecture (if there is any, I couldn't tell this week due to the conditions) is irrelevant with that kind of setup.

If I played there with this week's conditions, I'm sure it would totally kick my ass, but I'd leave feeling like every shot I lost was due to my lack of ability to hit the ball where I wanted, not because the architecture fooled me or I didn't think well enough.  In fact, I don't think I'd really need to think at all, just aim for the middle of the fairway and the middle of the green, because the cost of missing a fairway or green with that rough is far worse than any possible cost I could see from being on the "wrong" side of the fairway or leaving my approach above the hole (can you even say there's an "above" the hole on greens that flat?)  For those holes where I manage to successfully execute on that plan, its all down to having the green speed dialed in.  If I felt lazy and didn't want to think on the greens either I wouldn't even have to read the green, just aim it at the hole and if I get the speed right it'll be left close enough to tap in.

I just couldn't believe how soft the greens were.  Did it really rain that much out there?  Guess you can't do anything about mother nature, but they sure could do something about those ridiculously flat and boring greens.  There was very little break in any putts, the difference between being above and below the hole was pretty much irrelevant, there were no "just touch it and watch it trickle" putts anywhere on the course that I saw.  They didn't look particularly fast, either.  Maybe it was because they were so flat that they looked slower than they really are.  But I've lag putted on smooth concrete (friend's basement) before and even if its stimping at 18 or whatever the hell that would be it isn't difficult when there's no slope to worry about.
My hovercraft is full of eels.

Jim Nugent

Re:Medinah- The Emperor With no Clothes
« Reply #52 on: August 21, 2006, 03:55:35 AM »
Quote
Are the scores really that low?  The lowest score by a mortal will be -13 by Micheel.  If this were a US Open with a par of 70 then he would have been -5.

-5 is an extremely low U.S. Open score that would win almost every one ever held.  And TW's winning score of -10 would set the all-time scoring record on a par 70 course.  

But to make it par 70, they would have to considerably shorten two par 5's.  Chances are good the scores would go lower still.  I think the scores were extremely low.  The cut line further confirms this.

Quote
 Was it just me, or were there no putts on Medinah's greens that broke more than 6 inches?
 

That's what it looked like to me too.  Can anyone who knows the course well answer this question?

Hasn't Doak said something like defense begins at the greens?  Or was that Tillie?  On TV, Medinah doesn't look like it does that.  Is that so?

Travis Ripley

Re:Medinah- The Emperor With no Clothes
« Reply #53 on: August 21, 2006, 05:03:40 AM »
i have never seen a major where so many iron shots were hit dead stiff.  to me, the fairways are really flat at Medinah and you give these guys flat lies....where the ball is mostly neither above or below their feet....they are going to hit practice tee kind of shots.

and with the soft greens, spin it with middle irons throwing darts.

 

Matthew Rose

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Re:Medinah- The Emperor With no Clothes
« Reply #54 on: August 21, 2006, 09:23:32 AM »
Quote
-- the 3 par 3's over water are repetitive.  I think the fact they have had to change 17 so many times underscores this point.  

--When they changed 18 after the 1975 tournament they should have kept 12 and 13 as 16 and 17 somehow.  I think that would provide a stronger finish.  

--instead of adding a third par three over water they should have added a risk reward par 5 with the green on the far side of the lake.  Aside from the par 3s the lake does not come into play in any meaningful way.  This would have added some variety, made them think a little and brought eagle into play.  

I took a look at Medinah's original routing and I think it was a better routing, at least on paper. I had forgotten how it went exactly so I pulled out my old World Atlas of Golf.

There used to be a waterless par-3 (old 14th) that played from the (current) 16th green to somewhere near the beginning of the (current) 14th fairway. Then the (old) 15th was a short par-four basically covering the last 320 yards of the current 14th.

Looking at this makes me wonder if they couldn't have put the new 17th sort of the in the general area of that abandoned par-three, possibly putting it right on Lake Kadijah and making it a lateral hazard all the way down the left side. You would have had to move the 18th tee a bit or make the walk longer, though. Or perhaps put it on the other side of the lake and make the water on the right. It'd still be a water hole, but you'd have it running the length of the hole instead of having another forced carry.

Of course, they could have just left the original routing alone too. A par 71 with two water par-3s, two waterless par-3s, and a (possibly?) driveable par four.

Was the only way to "fix" 18 to move it into a completely different spot?
« Last Edit: August 21, 2006, 09:26:31 AM by Matt Rose »
American-Australian. Trackman Course Guy. Fatalistic sports fan. Drummer. Bass player. Father. Cat lover.

tlavin

Re:Medinah- The Emperor With no Clothes
« Reply #55 on: August 21, 2006, 10:33:47 AM »
I took a look at Medinah's original routing and I think it was a better routing, at least on paper. I had forgotten how it went exactly so I pulled out my old World Atlas of Golf.

There used to be a waterless par-3 (old 14th) that played from the (current) 16th green to somewhere near the beginning of the (current) 14th fairway. Then the (old) 15th was a short par-four basically covering the last 320 yards of the current 14th.

Looking at this makes me wonder if they couldn't have put the new 17th sort of the in the general area of that abandoned par-three, possibly putting it right on Lake Kadijah and making it a lateral hazard all the way down the left side. You would have had to move the 18th tee a bit or make the walk longer, though. Or perhaps put it on the other side of the lake and make the water on the right. It'd still be a water hole, but you'd have it running the length of the hole instead of having another forced carry.

Of course, they could have just left the original routing alone too. A par 71 with two water par-3s, two waterless par-3s, and a (possibly?) driveable par four.

Was the only way to "fix" 18 to move it into a completely different spot?


Interesting Rees Jones Jr. work here!  It seems to me that there are two central reasons why Medinah didn't measure up by the standards of many.  First, long ago, it fell into the architectural camp that believes that length, length and more length would make the golf course tough, tough and tougher still for the pro tour.  There is a long line of clubs who have been in that camp and they are all now the victims of technological changes in the ball and in equipment, combined with the fitness of the modern player.  

Length is almost irrelevant to these beasts.  Let's look at two holes: #12 is a montrously long dogleg to the right with a dramatically tilted fairway to the right and a pond on the right.  The pros average score?  4.05, making it the sixth hardest hole.  I'm betting that the sixth hardest hole at the Bethpage Open was harder than that.  The 14th hole is 605 yards long and the pros just destroyed it, with an average score of 4.8, making it the third easiest hole on the course.  To us mere mortals, those two holes would probably rank first and second in terms of toughness, but they were a piece of cake to the touring pros.

Why were they so damned easy this week?  The answer is simple: the golf course was rendered defenseless by its soft conditions.  Just ask any Chicago area superintendant about the weather this August.  They'll tell you that August features the most large rainstorms and that there were a number of soaking rains in late July and in early August.  Good golfers kill golf courses if they are soft.  In fact, I played Medinah a couple weeks before they closed the course with Ryan Potts.  It rained 1 1/2 inches the night before and I was stopping three-woods on the greens.  I shot 40 on the front from the back (not pro) tees.

As the championship neared, we kept getting more rain.  I checked in with my pals and was not surprised to learn that the course was still soft and sticky.  This is because of natural conditions, not the superintendant soaking the golf course.  I'm sure in the aftermath of this tournament, the greens committee will be poring (pardon the pun) over the logs of the superintendent and I'm sure that they will find that he was not using that much water, except for a two week barrage of heat and humidity in mid-July.

Sorry to sound like an amateur meteorologist, but the truth is that Mother Nature and Father Technology combined in a Perfect Storm that allowed par to take a beating.