Where will the USGA mess up this week?

[Kevin Rawley]

It's become a Father's Day week tradition unlike any other... the annual US Open course setup disaster. An misjudged green (or greens as we saw at Southern Hills), a silly hole location, a last minute tree planting, letting some crazy greenkeeper walk-cut fairways, a bad grandstand placement hanging over an important bunker, etc...

What will it be this year?

[Patrick_Mucci]

Kevin,

What about the zillion things they do right that go into producing an event of this magnitude ?

I'm sure you're aware that even the most brilliant  Doctors and Lawyers have malpractice insurance.

[Dave_Miller]

Patrick:
Right on point.  Are there foul ups?  Of course, but few and far between.  
I have had the absolute pleasure of working with the USGA Tournament personnel on course set-up, pin placement, marking,  etc. for the USGA tournament my home course is hosting next year.  I can truly say the objective is to set up a golf course that is demanding and challenging but fair.  Example - A long par three with an option of forcing just about every player to hit a wood - the USGA said no we want to set it up so the good player can have the option of keeping the iron in his hand and to think about the shot.  The wood might be the best option but maybe not.  It may be the iron.
The USGA does not "mess up" intentionally and does not lightly set anything without thinking it through.
Fairways and Greens
Dave Miller

[Matt_Cohn]

IF there is anything they will get picked on for - and I think everything will go very well - it might be the 10th tee start.

The TV preview show said it will 30 minutes between a player's last range ball and his tee shot on #10. Then they face par fours of 492, 435, and 499.

I think a couple of big names might start 5-5-5 or worse from #10, and it will be an issue to some.

By the way, did anyone else watch that preview show? Did anyone see the iron shot Andy North played to #4 green? It hit in the front-middle of the green, bounced like it hit a cartpath, and went down that shaved slope into oblivion. Where did that ball end up?

Is THAT the mistake the USGA will be criticized for - mowing that slope?

[Patrick_Mucci]

Dave,

The weather, rain, making the course soft, will be blamed on the USGA as well.

Matt,

You may be right, this configuration of holes may put those who start the back nine in a bad mood early.

[TEPaul]

I couldn't agree with Pat more that the zillion things that the USGA does right on set-up tends to go unnoticed but one thing amiss gets all the notice and press!

What, if anything will go wrong on set-up this year? My feeling would be, mentioned by Mark Lye, is the beginnings of a few fairways may be a bit too far out there for some of the pros!! This will be easily correctable by adjusting the tee markers but obviously once one pro has teed off they will stay where they are on that particular day--so it won't be correctable until the following day!

Fairways beginning at 260-270 could be excessive for some tour pros since they certainly don't all fly the ball that far and certainly not in certain conditions!

Lye made the cogent point that a slight edge will go to those pros who hit their tees shots long but also high!!

Matter of fact, Lye made the point that due to some very raised approaches this course will really favor those pros that hit everything long and high. He mentioned pros with ball flights like Woods and Love and said it would hurt pros with lower trajectories like Azinger and Price.

Another interesting observation about Bethpage and Woods. Since Woods tends to "eat up" par 5s like no other pro the fact that this is a par 70 (only two 5s) this cuts down some on his usual advantage! Woods record on par 70s vs higher pars is not nearly so good!

[David Wigler]

Kevin,

Explain your Southern Hills comment.  I played those greens the next week with the Ast. Professional.  The Head Superintendent explained the situation at 9 and 18 to me.  Both are very deep greens.  Shaved false fronts are part of what our “Whine if they can't shoot 65” Pro's should have to deal with to win our National Open.  I have no issues with what they did at Southern Hills - Only that they let the Pro's public whine undo it.

[Matt_Ward]

Kevin:

The week is still early but from my own personal observation the course looks just great and is ready to go.

Players who usually object to "this and that" have their attention on other things instead of total focus on playing the course.

Let's be fair about the USGA -- they did bring the Open to a public facility -- a major first!

The back nine start for the players will really test them -- it might be the toughest three-hole start ever experienced in an Open because two of the par-4's are extremely demanding. You won't win the Open on these holes but you can't stand on the par-5 13th tee and be +3 either. At the same time if a player can get to #13 at even or even below par he will have a considerable advantage because he plays the easier front nine as ther last half of his round. We shall see.

What the USGA did do that concerns me was not use the real back tee at #15. The hole is very demanding but having the option in using it for at least one round would have been nice. That's not possible since bleachers are located right on top of it.

Thus far, the Open is moving along nicely to what should be a grand event.

[TEPaul]

David Wigler:

Concerning those few greens (that Kevin mentioned) at Southern Hills in the first day or two of the US Open that appeared over the top compared to what you may have played a week or so later--I would bet my bottom dollar they weren't remotely the same as what you played!

I'm sure tour pros do whine but there's a lot more to it than that. They're definitely able to handle very fast greens without complaining much (matter of fact most of them seem to like very fast greens).

However, "tournament set-up" can be sometimes so remarkably different from what many people realize as to be downright astounding!

I never fully realized the extent of the difference until playing the Coleman at Seminole about ten years ago. Seminole is a course my father belonged to so obviously I knew it really well. But on both days of the Coleman they put it into an amazing tournament set-up that none of us had ever seen before at least not on Seminole! It was so remarkably different to play it was astounding and made more so by the fact you really couldn't see it very well--it sort of looked the same except for what I've much later come to call a very light green sheen on the course but particularly the greens!

If that wasn't astounding enough what was much more so was the fact that about 12 to 18 hours after the tournment was over (Saturday) the course was right back to the way it played for everyday member play. Most of us played it again on Sunday and it was about ten times easier to score on because in that short amount of time it had obviously come off the "edge" that makes that kind of tournament set-up everything it is! It's basically a every fine-line "edge" that can affect "playability" tremendously creating almost a chasm of difference to some players who don't understand the difference (and at that time one of those players was definitely me!).

I'll never forget that situation at Seminole and it really taught me a lot--at first as a player and many years later as an architectural analyst! Those kind of things are ramifications of what I now call the "maintenance meld" and it's definitely not something to be lightly considered!

So I would say at Southern Hills the playability you saw a week of two later may have been astoundingly different than what those pros saw on the Thursday of the US Open. There would be no reason at all for the Southern Hills super to put the course into a boarderline "stress" situation a week or two after the Open. To the contrary he probably would have brought the course way back into its (or his) comfort zone!!

[David Wigler]

Tom,

Under normal conditions, I would agree with you.  I worked at the Open at Oakland Hills and saw the differences between the course I play and the course the Pro's played.  Specific to this situation though, it is not the case.  

As a favor, The Super put the pins on 9, 17 and 18 in the exact position they were in on the Sunday of the event.  I asked how close the speeds were to Open speed.  He said that 17 would be slower than Open speed but the Pro's had whined so much during the practice rounds, that the speed of 9 and 18 on the day I played was probably slightly faster than the speed at which the Open was played.  The Pro's did not want their shots rolling back from the green and off the false front or want to suffer the humiliation that Karrie Webb and Anika suffered in the Battle at Big Horn, where an aggressive downhill put rolled 30 yards past the hole.  Believe me, the pro's could have handled 9 and 18 and the USGA was not at fault for bad greens.

[Jamie_Duffner]

They play split tees every week, they can deal with this.  If it weren't for 6 hour rounds, they could all go off the 1st, but any weather dely throws the hole thing into disarray.  These are the best players in the world, they can make a good swing 30 minutes apart.

I agree, the USGA has done a fantastic job.  Did anyone see the making of a major on the golf channel.  The planning that goes into the US Open is unblievable.  It takes hundreds of dedicated folks to pull this off.  

As for the course setup, I'm not sure what the USGA can do to make it unfair.  There's typical rough and fairway widths, no surprise there.  There's really no unfair hole locations other than the front of 15, which is unusable.  

David Duval had a very funny comment (I'm paraphrasing here), "the guy who predicted a scoring record must have meant the brown course."

[TEPaul]

David:

I'll take your word for it but to see speeds on greens in that locale similar to what they were at anytime during the US Open would be very surprising to me--very surprising!!

So surprising, in fact that I would say that super must be absolutely the best I've ever heard of or just about totally insane to have his course like that a week later!

[David Wigler]

Tom,

The speeds on all greens but 9 and 18 were slower (Maybe much slower).  He was not allowed to keep 9 and 18 at the same speed as the other greens.  It was funny to hear pros complain that the speed of 9 and 18 were inconsistent with the rest of the course, when that was exactly what they demanded.

[TEPaul]

David:

You're right, I just saw Goosen interviewed and he said he was very aware that #18 was apparently much slower when he hit his first (of 3 putts) on the 72nd hole. He said he was surprised that he'd hit it too hard as he must have thought it was much slower than the others!

[BCrosby]

Before we get too carried away with the "whiney baby" pro stuff, during the practice rounds at SH last year, players were putting off nos. 9 and 18 greens.  I recall that Els lipped out a five foot putt on 18 that then trundled off the front of the green.  There were similar stories about Price and Love (as best I can recall) at no. 9 on the Wednesday before the tournament.

The USGA was watching and wanted to avoid the Oympic no. 18 mess of several years ago.

The pros didn't need to do a lot of complaining.  It was pretty clear to everyone, including the USGA, that the speeds on those greens had gotten out of hand.

The problem was that by Wednesday evening it was too late to implement a course wide solution.  So they came up with something half-baked.

Bob

  

[Mike_Sweeney]

Any organization that can REDUCE weekend traffic around Shinnecock for the last US Open on LI must be doing something right.  

[Scott_Burroughs]

I thought the complaint about the Southern Hills #18 hole location on Sunday was that the hole was a bit like a volcano, where the hole was at the top of a small hill, and anything but a perfect putt rolled away from the hole, like on a miniature golf course.

My 'complaint' about this year's is that I think #12 is unfair.  Only a handful can clear the bunker on the fly (supposedly 270 uphill to carry), and all others who play safe to the right have 280 yards in.  Basically a par 5.  I feel that the original length of the hole was fine, where it was 30 yards shorter, meaning 240 to carry, still not trivial for everyone.

[Bruceski]

Scott,

Nevertheless, the decision to attempt to carry that bunker off the tee comes with some risk. If the player can't draw the drive, or if he plays the wrong line the ball can carry into the right rough beyond the bunker (especially if conditions are dry). No matter the choice made -- bail out right, or "go for it", the drive is a hard one. Regardless of his approach, the player should consider this hole a par 5 with risk/reward opportunity from tee.

[JonV]

Since everyone will have to start off #10 one day it all evens out.

As for #12, isn't that the point of a "risk/reward" hole and a strategic option?  If you can't make the carry, you have to play the shot another direction at the possible loss of a shot.  If you make it a 240 yard carry probably 90% of this field could carry it so it really wouldn't become a real choice for them.  This separates the men from the boys, but the men still have to execute the shot.

[Paul Richards]

I found it interesting that the defending Senior Open
champion has withdrawn because he said the course is too
hard.

[Patrick_Mucci]

Paul Richards,

Maybe there is a bigger difference in the playing talent/level than we've been led to believe.

[Scott_Burroughs]

So much for tough long holes and Tiger worried about keeping the driver straight.  The course just isn't that long for him.  He didn't even need driver on two long par 4's thought to be amonst the toughest.  

On #5 (451 yards), he hit 2-iron, 7-iron stiff (yawn).

On "notorious" #15, he hit 3-wood, 7-iron to 20 feet (zzzz).

He only hit driver on #4, ,9,10,12,13, and 16.  And the one on 9 was due to a crowd oohing about partner Adam Scott "crushed" driver around the bend, which Tiger effortless passed him by 35 yards.  I bet he won't hit driver there during the Open.  

So that means he doesn't even need driver on 3 supposedly long par 4's, #5, #7, and #15.  #7 is something like 489 yards.

[Lance]

Yeah Tiger is hitting it long, BUT with the winds expected to shift 180 degrees into the E-NE beginning Thursday I believe the lack of experience the entire field has a bethpage will be very telling. Today #15 was playing with a 20mph tailwind from the early morning allowing players to knock there drives down to the 140 yard mark, but with the N-NE wind you may see 5 woods needed to hit that green. I believe the rain will definitely allow greens to be held, but this new prediction for the wind direction will force the field to play a course they have never experienced before and which plays very very differently. Lance

[Matt_Ward]

Lance:

Thanks for spelling out to Scott an dothers that the SW win direction made possible for many of the results Tiger and other are able to claim.

I've played the Black well over 200 times over the last 30 years and as someone who hits the ball a decent ways I can name a number of people who've used a 3-wood or less on #5 for position when the wind is blowing behind them. Ditto #7 and #15, to name just two. Staying in the fairway is many times easier for you rapproach than wildly going with the driver.

You're right about the change of wind direction. If the boys "zone" in with a SW wind the flip of that will definitely cause some major adjustments.

[Herb_Flood]

Did anyone notice that the gallery ropes were placed farther back than usual??? My friend at the USGA tells me that players who put it in the rough will not have the advantage of being in "trampled-down" rough. I thought that was a smart move by the "Bluecoats!"