Just a great guy -- wish him well. Here's a summary of an interview I conducted with Mike for F & G.
Golf's Top Set-Up Guy
USGA’s Mike Davis Can Take the Heat — and the Praise — for His Open Work
Features • Matt Ward • 02/17/11
Mike Davis, USGA
Back in June 2005, Mike Davis ascended to a position few golf fans understand or even realize. As Director of Rules & Competitions for the United States Golf Association, Davis became the point man on staff overseeing all 17 national championships conducted by the USGA, including the most important and scrutinized of them all, the U.S. Open, which returns to a reworked Congressional Country Club in Bethesda, Md., this June.
Before Davis took the job, the USGA was often hammered for its handling of the national championship. Poorly conceived pin placements in tandem with stressing turf conditions beyond manageable limits opened up a barrage of criticism from the media and a range of the game’s premier players. The torrent of criticism focused on how luck — not overall playing skill — was weeding its way into the event’s outcomes.
The 2006 U.S. Open at Winged Foot marked a change to Davis’ nuanced course set-up philosophy. In years past, the formula was quite straightforward — extremely narrow fairways bordered by high grass coupled with quick and fast putting surfaces. The playability envelope was pushed to the max and the border between rewarding fine play and penalizing poor play was blurred to the point of incomprehension — usually at critical junctures.
But that year Davis and Jim Hyler, chairman of the USGA Championship Committee, introduced the graduated rough concept — stray tee shots would not be penalized to the same degree as those shots missing farther afield. Davis also widened perimeter rough areas so gallery foot traffic would not trample down such grass, thereby making easier recoveries possible. But Davis also added another wrinkle, changing tee locations at various holes and adding, when possible, a drivable par-4 option in order to create more mental as well as physical options for players to overcome.
The players, public and media took to these changes right away and the past few Opens have been among recent history’s most exciting.
Now living in Pittstown, N.J., with his wife Cece and son Grant, Davis operates in a low key manner, but he’s clearly making his mark by enhancing player and fan excitement without compromising long-established golf traditions.
You’ve been the point person for setting up the USGA’s big events for a few years now. Is it different than what you expected?
Not really. I had the luxury of carefully watching P.J. Boatwright, David Eger and Tom Meeks for 16 Opens before I jumped in. I learned from each of them — and clearly understood what an honor it is to have this position.
What’s something many golf fans would likely be totally unaware of given your job duties in terms of overall course preparation for USGA events?
Just how important the golf course superintendent is. Other than Mother Nature, no one has more impact on the overall success of our Opens. Sometimes I think our trick is just staying out of their way.
In past Opens the winner generally survived and all others simply plodded along. Since your ascension to the top position, you instituted graduated rough, drivable 4-pars and a willingness to move tees and pins as needed. Was something broken with the U.S. Open that needed fixing?
Broken? No. There’s 110 years’ worth of history where the U.S. Open has been the toughest test in golf. It’s our trademark, and we happen to like it. But we felt there were ways to make the test fairer and to also introduce more excitement. We’ve worked hard to ensure that good shots are generally rewarded and bad ones are penalized. We also very much like introducing more risk-reward where it makes sense — it gives players choice, makes them think, sometimes even on an impromptu basis.
Do you find it ironic the Masters has gone the opposite route by adding rough — a second cut — plus significant additional length, more trees and tighter landing areas at the same time the Open is moving away from being excessively penal?
I suppose there is irony, but I don’t really think there has been the wholesale shift that so many speak of. Sure, the Open has changed a bit, but it is still brutally tough. Our challenge is to keep it the toughest test of the year, while at the same time being mindful that it must be fair and exciting. As for Augusta, Mother Nature had a lot to do with the difficult scoring conditions at a couple of recent Masters. Yes, Augusta was lengthened, but that was in response to getting some of the holes to play like they once did before all the improvements with equipment. The Masters has some extremely talented people dealing with the course and its setup — and I just know you’ll see future Masters just as exciting as what we’ve seen in the past.
There was a bit of controversy with last year’s U.S. Open at Bethpage with all the rain. Can you envision the USGA, because of severe weather, allowing preferred lies in fairways? Plenty of players were upset that the heavy rains caused more mudballs and as a result had more of an impact than should have happened.
You’re right, there were some unhappy players. But to the USGA’s way of thinking, golf is not supposed to be totally fair and predictable when it comes to the lie of the ball. Right or wrong, we still believe bad lies, muddy conditions, golf balls that might not be squeaky-clean — even when they occur in the fairway — are all part of the game. Some would call that thinking pure stubbornness. We would counter and say it is in keeping with the traditions of the game. Put another way, dealing with varied lies and different challenges are aspects that make our game so intriguing.
How have the new protocols in club grooves impacted how you prepare the major events involving professionals?
The impact on golf course set-up is minimal. Like the last few years, we’ll keep the rough close-in to the fairways less penal, just trying to grow enough so there is some grass between the ball and the clubface at impact. The effects, however, on how the players play will not be so minimal. Coming out of the rough, male Tour players get 30 to 50 percent less spin than before. Furthermore, they sometimes get “fliers.” So not only is it tougher to stop a ball out of the rough, it makes distance-control more challenging.
Do you reach out to the players in any manner for feedback in terms of what you do?
Absolutely. As much as we study the course, getting feedback makes good sense. That said, we sometimes get one player saying one thing and another saying the opposite. I personally put more value in watching how the course is playing versus hearing about how it supposedly is playing. ... I recall one of the biggest name PGA Tour players at the Open at Oakmont [2007] telling me — and the media — how the greens were very inconsistent in speed, that the difference between the fastest and slowest green was more than 5 feet. Preposterous! And some of the media actually bought into it. It would be like us mowing one green at collar height and cutting and rolling the other green like a pool table. So yes, we might listen but we won’t always react.
Your handicap is in single digits. Do you get to play much?
I’ve been hovering around a 3 or 4 handicap the last few years, but my game is deteriorating. I’d describe it as consistently inconsistent — still some good quality shots, but the bad ones are now embarrassingly bad. I don’t play much and have no illusions of grandeur anymore. When playing, I find myself much more intrigued by a course’s architecture than by my score.
It appears the U.S. Open will be making more visits to public courses — with Bethpage and Torrey Pines already, and you have Chambers Bay, the new public layout outside of Seattle in a few years. How do you view their inclusion and does that mean less of a role for the more established clubs?
The inclusion of a few truly public golf courses that host our national Open has been wonderful on a few fronts. They’ve obviously been fine tests of golf, but what they’ve also managed to accomplish is to somewhat erase a stigma of public golf not being as good as private. That said, the USGA has absolutely no plans to banish some of the very best courses in the country that just happen to be private clubs. They’ve helped make the Open’s history rich. Can you imagine the Open not going to the likes of Oakmont and Shinnecock?
Have you ever second-guessed yourself on any course preparation? If so, what was it and how did it turn out?
I’ve yet to set up a course for a championship where I didn’t make multiple goofs in judgment. Some set-up decisions need to be made years in advance, some the week prior and others the morning of. The most recent Open at Bethpage had me second-guessing all kinds of things given the sopping wet conditions we had. Some teeing grounds, hole locations, fairway contours I personally thought would work well strategically were total duds. That’s just the nature of an outdoor sport. My predecessor told me to wear Teflon — and he’s right.
Plenty of people, especially traditionalists, believe more needs to be done [about distance], particularly in the area of the ball itself. What are your feelings on that?
Well, I probably need to be careful here … and we don’t have hours to discuss. Let’s just say I see very little good that has come out of the increased distance due to technological advances. I certainly see some bad. I’m not necessarily opposed to things that make the game more enjoyable, but to my way of thinking there is not a correlation between enjoyment and hitting the ball farther simply due to technology. Distance is all relative. All this said, any rollback of technology is much more complicated than people would imagine. Next question please!
What’s your biggest fear in the work you do now?
Missing the mark with the U.S. Open course set-up … and having that be the story that becomes part of golf history.
One of the more interesting developments you’ve had was getting Merion Golf Club back in the U.S. Open fold for 2013, the first there since 1981. What prompted your support for its inclusion?
Merion is a treasure in American golf. The golf world deserves to get a glance at this historic and wonderfully designed golf course. Jones won the Slam there in 1930; Hogan prevailed at the Open a couple decades later. Then the Nicklaus-Trevino battle. The place reeks with history. While the scorecard might only read 6,900 yards, players will be in for a treat — and a test. 2013 should be magical.
Interestingly, the USGA will have to incur some additional costs such as decreased overall fan attendance because of the tight acreage there. Not many sports groups make that kind of concession for marquee events. Was such a pitch for Merion a tougher sell because of that?
Surprisingly, it wasn’t. There was practically a unanimous sense that this was the right thing for the Open, for the USGA and for golf. The USGA was determined to go to Merion for all the right reasons — and I’m proud to say that money took a complete back seat in the decision-making. The day our board approved Merion for another Open was perhaps the most gratifying day I’ve had in my 20 years with the USGA.