Does anybody know when the construction starts??? I am going to play the course in about a month and was hoping to play it before the changes. Thanks.
Robert
Olympic gets some tweaking for 2012 OpenRon Kroichick
Thursday, August 28, 2008
(08-27) 18:47 PDT -- Three years, nine months and 17 days remain until the opening round of the 2012 U.S. Open at the Olympic Club. But it's not too early to start picturing what the Lake Course will look like when the national championship returns to the southwest corner of San Francisco.
It will look different than it does today, in many ways. That's because the Olympic Club board of directors, at its meeting Aug. 20, approved a plan to replace all the greens on the Lake Course, restore significant slope to the No. 18 green - where Payne Stewart famously stewed during the 1998 Open - and redesign No. 8, the par-3 adjacent to the clubhouse.
The impetus for the changes was the nematode, a ubiquitous worm prone to damaging poa annua greens at courses along the cool California coastline. So, much like its neighbors at Lake Merced, San Francisco Club and California Club, Olympic will replace poa greens with a strain of bentgrass.
"If the greens were fine, we wouldn't be doing this work," said Pat Murphy, chairman of Olympic's green committee. "But since we're doing this work, we think it will be a better course."
No. 18 created lively debate in '98, before Lee Janzen surged past Stewart to win the Open. USGA officials chose such a precarious pin placement for the second round, one of Stewart's putts inched past the hole and slid 20 feet downhill. He was not happy.
Olympic Club officials later flattened the green, but many members thought the new green had become too tame for a short par-4. Murphy said the next version will have more slope than it does now, though it won't be quite as severe as it was for the 1998 Open.
That sounded fine to Mike Davis, the USGA's senior director of rules and competition. Davis expects no problem finding suitable hole locations on No. 18, so he can avoid an encore of the '98 mess.
"Even if they were to move the green back to exactly what it used to be, we could do it," Davis said Wednesday. "I think the USGA just made a mistake in '98, putting the hole there. ... If we meet somewhere in the middle (on the slope), we can have that green the same speed as the others."
Davis knew the Olympic Club was contemplating changes, but he said he learned of last week's board approval only when On Golf called. He echoed Murphy's statement that the changes were member-driven, not demanded by the USGA.
The other striking wrinkle in this project: moving No. 8 to the right of its present location. That will turn a 137-yard par-3 into a much longer hole - with championship tees at 200 to 210 yards - with a different angle. It also allows Olympic officials to push back the green on No. 7.
"One short par-3 is fine," Murphy said, knowing No. 15 measures only 149 yards, "but two short par-3s just doesn't work in this day and age."
There will be other tweaks to the Lake Course, including lengthening a few holes and re-contouring the greens on Nos. 7 and 15.
The work will begin Nov. 4 and last until approximately June 1, 2009.E-mail Ron Kroichick at rkroichick@sfchronicle.com.