Are we witnessing another Shinnecock?

[Jerry Kluger]

I'm looking at the scores and it seems that Oakmont is taking no prisoners.  The scores are really high and anyone who has not teed off is steadily moving up the leaderboard.  Is this what the USGA really wanted - are they going to be happy if plus 10 or possibly higher wins the event?

[Phil McDade]

I think Shinnecock is the wrong comparison -- criticism of that Open had mainly to do with the USGA "losing" greens, particularly the par 3 7th and 17th, not necessarily the final score, which was -4. Several birdies were made down the stretch in that Open. Oakmont this year is starting to resemble WFoot '74, when only two players finished lower than +10 and the winning score was +7. Oakmont this year looks like something in which birdies will be few and far between and the player who simply avoids catastrophe may end up the winner.

[Jeff Taylor]

Low score wins. Does it really matter what that score is? Much has been said about tough conditions and embarrasing the pros.
It has long been established that golf is hard and that achievement is much sweeter when the task is difficult. The winner of this tournament will have much to be proud of.

[Dan Kelly]

Why not? It's the ultimate golf Survivor show. It's Extreme Golf.

That's the US Open!

P.S. Paul Casey is three under par today, through 14. If Oakmont were impossible, no one would be three under par.

[Jim Sweeney]

A good an knowlegeble friend of mine says that a tournament is a success when you've handed out the trophy and all your radios have been returned.

I will be happy that a national champion is crowned. I have no interest in how many over or under par he is, only that he played the game honestly and that they spelled his name correctly on the trophy.

[Joe Hancock]

Low score wins, however....

Golf is the loser every time we display these wall to wall, nuclear green, perfectly manicured, deep roughed gems. That may be an overstatement, and probably just an over the top way of stating my preferences.....

I'd love to enjoy this meal, but the overly decorated table setting is upsetting my stomach.

Pass the striping please....

Joe

[Jerry Kluger]

The question is whether a player can execute the shots necessary to play the course.  The fairways have been narrowed to the point that the consensus is that driver is not the club to hit off the tee on most holes.  This means that the players are hitting longer clubs into the greens. They are then unable to hit the extremely precise shot that is necessary to put the ball in a place that they can make par - forget about birdie.  With all the talk about the course, I have not seen the ground game as an option so what they are the players to do?  Should the test be who can make the most 8 foot putts to save par?

[Brent Hutto]

...I have not seen the ground game as an option so what they are the players to do?  Should the test be who can make the most 8 foot putts to save par?

Jerry,

I'd offer a slightly more elaborate twist on your analysis. I think the "test" Oakmont is providing to the player is two-fold.

Can he keep making 8-footers to save par?

And how long can he stomach those 8-footers for par before he gets impatient and tries to hit long clubs out of the rough or drivers off the tee?

It's really an interesting mental challenge. Unfortunately, all we can see on TV is the actual shots and those just aren't particularly riveting. Watching putting in innately boring and the rough is too consistently difficult to allow the occasional heroic recovery that would add some excitement.

We have to settle for seeing a few shots from someone like Paul Casey who happens to be striping it and getting some putts to drop. But there aren't many Casey rounds in the cards today.

[Dan Kelly]

Golf is the loser every time we display these wall to wall, nuclear green, perfectly manicured, deep roughed gems. That may be an overstatement, and probably just an over the top way of stating my preferences.....

Other than the deep rough and the "gems" part ... isn't that true every week of every year on the PGA Tour?

Is the PGA Tour bad for golf? (I have no idea what my answer would be to that.)

[George Pazin]

Low score wins, however....

Golf is the loser every time we display these wall to wall, nuclear green, perfectly manicured, deep roughed gems. That may be an overstatement, and probably just an over the top way of stating my preferences.....

I'd love to enjoy this meal, but the overly decorated table setting is upsetting my stomach.

Pass the striping please....

Joe

As I stated on another thread, the course does not look nearly as nuclear green in person. I think you'll see more shades of yellow and brown over the weekend, but it most definitely doesn't look as intensely green in person.

And as one who loved the Shinney Open - Pat Brockwell's sage advice has been my tagline for 3 years now - I can only hope the Oakmont open turns out as well.

[Matt_Ward]

Jerry:

I have been to 19 US Opens and the site / preparation for this year's event is not out of hand thus far. The course provides scoring opportunities but you do pay a price for wayward driving. The rough is indeed rough as it should be for a national championship.

Driving the ball accurately is alive and well at Oakmont and for those who do it will negate the surge of length that the top players show routinely on tour.

[Jerry Kluger]

Matt: There is no question that getting the ball in the fairway is a must but that is not the question.  The question is whether the next shot can be executed and if that shot has to be so precise that even the slightest variation from perfect likely results in bogey or worse.  

[Phil McDade]

Casey hit all but one fairway and shot 66. Cabrera has played very long and enough in the fairway to hit shots like he did on the last hole to within a few feet for birdie. All of the leaders shot around par today, with Casey having a very good round. It seems the course so far is proving to be what the USGA usually wants -- a stern examination of par golf.

I'll be curious about their overnight treatment of the greens, given what happened at Shinnecock and the weather forecast of no/little rain. Commentary today suggested the USGA is well aware of the Shinnecock criticism and won't let the greens get out of hand (although Sluman's chip on 3 today suggested they are close to it....)

[Mark_Fine]

To put things into perspective, I played the course with a multiple club champion a month or two ago.  We met up in the clubhouse on Thursday during the tournament and he said to me, "Mark, the course is playing easier than when you and I played it!  The rough is very managable and the greens are soft."  

It will and has gotten tougher as it dries out but it is not at all a Shinnecock Hills situation.  

Note: We spoke again this morning.  His comment as of today is that "the course is getting there".  A little more tweaking  

[TEPaul]

The word I got about the golf course from the super, albeit it indirectly, is that the thunderstorm on Wednesday night (1.4" of rain) set the course back two days from the way they want it. There hasn't been any rain since Wednesday night so over the weekend if it doesn't rain we should see Oakmont the way they want it.

To me the best barometer of a great golf course and great architecture in a US Open setup is when you get a real scoring differential or spectrum throughout the entire field.

Seems like Oakmont is accomplishing that.

[TEPaul]

Sean:

I doubt it because I'm not a statistics type guy anyway. But if that's the case with the US Open generally, that's fine by me.

Somebody has to win any tournament and if somebody really separates themselves from the field like Woods did in both the US Open and the British Open in 2000 what does that say?

Some apparently think that's boring. I don't. I was frankly fascinated to see someone that good firing on all eight cylinders in my lifetime and experience.

I guess I'm just more interested in seeing true excellence than I am in the sort of photo-finish mentality.

[Matt_Ward]

Jerry:

The singular aspect I believe needs attention is the USGA's past penchant in having the so-called 1/2 shot penalty for hitting it into the rough.

I do concede there are spots on the course that take this extraction beyond the 1/2 shot elements previously embraced.

Oakmont doesn't need "protection." The greens, the rolling terrain, the pressue of the magnitude of the event, all come together to provide the situation at hand.

However, it's about time that driving the ball accurately is rewarded. The thinking of today's game has been to beat and chase the ball and go from there. You can beat the ball at Oakmont -- just better be aware of the dangers if you miss.

I salute Tiger yesterday in playing the 1st hole with an iron -- even when it played into a steady NE wind into his face. Tiger was smart enough to know his limitations and then followed up with a long iron that chased to the rear of the green.

The issue with rough is that it should most certainly penalize players but the recovery needs to be a bit more than just the garden variety SW / PW hack it out approach.

Jerry -- one other aspect -- at Oakmont when you miss around the green the sheer complexity of the green contours don't make for anything close to rudimentary up'n down situations. Once you go wrong at the tee the explosion of possibilities simply goes off the charts and pity the player not fully capable in thoroughly understanding course management.

Patience and persistence will be the keys for the final 36 holes.

[TEPaul]

The rough of Oakmont this week is actually very interesting to look at. I stuck my hand and fingers in a bunch of it this week.

The thing that's most interesting about it and the thing that apparently the super is most proud of is it really isn't all that long or even thick compared to the rough grass in other Opens. What he likes is that the rough grass is standing straight up and not lying down.

When you have rough like that the ball will almost always go to the bottom of it and almost never sit on top of it.

Other than the incredibly long and "lying down" rough in some of those drainage ditches it would be very hard to lose a golf ball in the rough at Oakmont this week.

On the other hand, the rough treatment around the course is not and is not supposed to be consistent throughout the course. For instance the rough in front of #17 green is far more penal than other areas of the course.

[Eric_Terhorst]

Matt: There is no question that getting the ball in the fairway is a must but that is not the question.  The question is whether the next shot can be executed and if that shot has to be so precise that even the slightest variation from perfect likely results in bogey or worse.  

"With all the talk about the course, I have not seen the ground game as an option so what they are the players to do?  Should the test be who can make the most 8 foot putts to save par?"

Jerry, based on your comments above and elsewhere in the thread and on other threads, I have no idea what tournament you are watching.  I've seen guys make all manner and variety of pars, and hit all manner and variety of shots, ranging from a chip with what looked like a 6-iron, never got more than an inch off the ground, purposely thrown up against a bank so that it would (and did) roll back to the flag for a tap-in par, to 135-yd SW from Cabrera that stops 2 feet from the flag on the last hole and eliminates 20+ players as he makes birdie.  The approach shot wasn't "perfect"--it didn't go in the hole--but he hit two superb shots there.  I watched Olazabal get hung up in the rough on #10 on Thus, then hole a long "perfect" bunker shot for a par.  

The bottom line is the best executers and most creative shot-makers are leading, it's not just about fairways, and it's not just about putting.  So far I just can't find anything wrong with the course, the penal set-up (which may not appeal to some but matches Fownes' fundamental philosophy), or the results!

[TEPaul]

"Tom P
Come to think of it - can you name ANY pro tournament which doesn't have a huge difference between the winner and the last guy?  I think you are well barked up the wrong tree with this theory.  Courses don't create champions or chumps - when will folks around here start to understand this?"

Sean:

Frankly, I grow pretty tired of posts like that one, although I have no idea what you mean by champions or chumps.  

Do you see any difference at all between a scoring spectrum on a normal pro tour tournament where everybody who makes the cut is under par and a tournament like this one at Oakmont?

If not, let's just agree not to pursue it, OK?

In my opinion, today was one of the more exciting days I've seen in a US Open. I saw the #1 player in the world play some amazingly great golf and get not not much out of it compared to what it might have been.

I saw a lot of others rise and fall and rise again, also playing some great golf with some missteps here and there. The fact that they aren't ALL some laundry list of super well known major champions frankly makes no difference to me at all. I was watching some interesting golf in a real pressure cooker.

[Willie_Dow]

Tom -
As you know it the feel of the green !
How do you read these placements ?
 

[TEPaul]

"Tom -
As you know it the feel of the green !
How do you read these placements?"

Bill:

If I'm understanding that question correctly I think what we generally saw today with putting on those Oakmont greens was best said by Johnny Miller.

Those greens were really fast and they have some pretty nuancy breaks and one just needs to get the break and speed so competely connected to make putts on those kinds of greens with that kind of ultra fast setup. Greens and placements with speeds like that I think need to by treated and putted with Ben Crenshaw's advice to take the highest line with the gentlest speed.

Woods, for instance, was appreciating how much some of those lightening fast putts can crank but he just wasn't completely clicking on the pace. He missed almost all his makeable putts on the high side----eg expecting them to crank more than they did. At least missing on the high side is what most people call missing on the "pro side".

On some of the ultra fast downhill putts on a set up like Oakmont's I think most of those pros worry about what they call the "power lipout" where the ball can just rocket off a lip and away.

There's a whole lot of a defensive mentality in putting greens like those of Oakmont this week.

[Phil McDade]

Tom:

I, too, was struck by Tiger's putting today, and my only conclusion was -- those greens must be a b...tch to read and putt. Tiger, maybe on nearly every other course in the world (and I'd include Augusta in that), would have shot 62 or 63 or 64 today. His putts weren't bad; in fact, I thought his speed all day was very good, and left himself with very few putts for par that he had to sweat. It was an interesting exhibition of putting -- 35 putts for a round is a lot by his standards, but he didn't have a three-putt, didn't have very many difficult second putts, and seemed genuinely pleased with how he performed on the greens, which is something of a compliment to those greens and this set-up, given his demanding standards for his overall game.

[Doug Siebert]

Maybe it is just my imagination, but it sure appeared that the greens were faster on Thursday than they were on Friday or Saturday.  I base that on the way the ball reacted as it slowed down, there were a lot more balls that just kept crawling along at a half inch a second that is my personal barometer for green speed.

Now its possible that maybe the TV cameras were focusing on that more Thursday or the tougher pin positions on Thursday just lent themselves to this.  But I saw very few balls get away from the players today, it was happening all the time on Thursday (yeah yeah, I know we are seeing guys who are off and missing the cut then, but some of those balls belonged to the guys who are still playing this weekend)

I just wonder if based on the scores recorded on Thursday and knowing that the greens were only going to firm up and the rough was only going to grow (unless they are mowing it during the tournament) that they didn't raise the mowing height an mm or so as a way of evening things out.

[Jim Nugent]

Phil, it will surprise me if Tiger is pleased with his putting in the 3rd round.  Especially his birdie putts in the 5 to 10 foot range, of which he had many.  He missed several today, and I believe he missed a number during the 1st two rounds too.  Baddeley is leading by two in large part because he is making most of those putts.

At Pebble, didn't Tiger make every putt under 10 feet, or something like that?  If (that big word) he'd done the same thing here, he'd be sitting on a real big lead now.