I think it's important to know that Mike Davis really does seem to have a "philosophy" or a new philosophy about setup or certain new wrinkles in setup----including US Open setup. Perhaps the new idea that should be directly connected to him is this idea of "graduated rough" but his dedication to getting what I might call the ideal balance of fast AND FIRM on those US Open greens was really impressive to me at Torrey Pines. That latter aspect really was what I call the "IMM" with greens, and I think it showed bigtime in shotmaking and strategies that promoted a new and heightened degree of tournament excitement at Oakmont and particularly Torrey. To nail that kind of ideal fast AND FIRM setup on the greens does need some cooperation from Old Mother Nature and in the last two Opens he got that.
Another great set-up wrinkle out of Mike Davis' own playbook is this idea of really mixing up the tee markers and hole lengths, particularly on short par 4s. Basically with that at Oakmont and Torrey Mike Davis gave the players 2-3 semi-different courses in four days.
I got to know Mike a couple of years ago probably mostly through my association with his dad, Bill Davis, on the Pennsylvania Golf Association, and I feel like because of that I've been able to have a few very edifying conversations with him about setup and architecture. The fact is Mike Davis just loves classic golf architecture like most all of us on here do.
I've got some huge high hopes with Mike Davis as the USGA's new Competitions Director as I think a lot of people do now, including, thankfully, a lot on the USGA. The other thing I should mention about Mike Davis that those who've never met him might not know about. All of us, from time to time, hear about somebody who's just as nice and friendly as he is good, and I'll absolutely guarantee you that's Mike Davis in spades. When you meet him there's just no way you won't notice that too.
Here's a bit of golf setup trivia, but sometimes in some businesses a rather simple but prescient remark gets attributed to someone and becomes famous. This may be aprocyphal or it may not be but at the 2004 US Open (I guess before Mike Davis took over as the Competitions Director) that happened. Like me, maybe Mike Davis is a fan or student of NASA and Apollo 13 and its lore ("Houston, we've got a problem")----at a particular point on the weekend at Shinnecock with a ton of people on the radio headphones these rather significant words apparently came across the radio from Mike as he was checking out a green-----"I THINK WE'VE GOT A PROBLEM!"
But again, this Open at Torrey with setup was a slam dunk winner, in my opinion.