OLYMPIA FIELDS: an aberration?

[mikeyolympic]

i've been following the U.S. Open very closely, and I cannot believe what I am seeing. The cut being +3? You've got to be kidding me... Have you ever seen so many shots holed out in a tournament? It looks like a regular PGA tour event...

I really like Olympia Fields alot. I think it's a superb course that really isn't showing its teeth because of two things. first of all, the grounds crew really goofed with the rough. it is not thick or tall enough! i know that part of it has to do with mother nature, but it seemed to me like the balls were sitting up nicely in the rough for almost everyone. it kind of reminded me about pebble beach 2000, when roger maltbie and johnny miller called in the USGA about 3 weeks before the open to express concern that the rough was not tall enough... then the USGA added another inch, and we had ourselves real open rough...sad that the course is just getting hammered by the players... i know the players are lovin' it though!

second, where is this damn chicago wind?

have you ever seen the greens so soft before in a U.S. open? some greens are lighting quick (#13), but balls are stopping too easily...

will this mean that next year at shinnecock, the USGA will seek revenge for these record scores? will it be a repeat of the massacre at winged foot in '74? oh boy...

i know we still haven't reached the weekend, and we need to see how this course fares after four rounds, not two. however, with the pace of what's going on, it looks like the record of 272 will be easily shattered.

god, the USGA peepz are hating this!

, and it can be tough. However... there have been some stuff..

[Bruceski]

I think everyone, including the USGA, didn't expect the club distances to take the leap they did this year. Note how the placement of the crosswalks in the fairways at Olympia Fields -- generally placed beyond the reach of even the longest players -- are coming into play for quite a few players. With regard to length off the tee, the difference between this year and last year is profound, and even Bethpage might have been more defenseless had the Open been played at the Black this year.

[Mike_Cirba]

shivas;

That's one helluva "conspiracy theory"!  

Regarding Merion, as Patrick mentioned, after about two months of solid rain (more last night and more coming later today) deluging the east coast, perhaps the USGA picked the correct site after all.  

Frankly, these past six-seven months are the worst weather I ever recall.   We slogged through the mud at Aronimink last weekend, yet somehow they managed to keep the playing areas reasonably dry and firm.  Also, the course held up pretty damn well against scoring, somehow.  

[mikeyolympic]

shivas,

wow. what a theory. but the thing that is scary is that it might be true (it sure sounds true). but this is sad... this is our national championship and it's playing too easy... i'm a big fan of even par winning where guts and grinding it out pays off more than just a birdie blitz. OF will definitely be something that stands out in the record books for the wrong reasons....

also, you didn't answer one of my other questions. do you think the USGA will retaliate at shinnecock next year? make it as tough as winged foot in '74?

[noonan]

How can Mike Weir hit a 3 wood over 200 yards out of open rough?

It has to be the rough that is not penalizing golfers.

JK

[mikeyolympic]

SATURDAY: there's that notorious chicago wind the USGA was looking for... it's true what the announcers were saying...the greens on the course just looked a lot firmer and treacherous... the back nine is starting to show its teeth with no let up (no par 5's, bunch of 460 par 4's)...now it's starting to feel like an U.S. Open...

man...watching Tiger blow up... it's almost unbearable to watch...tough luck

[Justin_Zook]

I think that this U.S. Open is one of the most boring tournaments I have ever forced myself to watch.

I love watching the Open 1, because of the courses and two becaue of the players.  

The reason why, IMO, that the players are tearing apart the course is becasue the course is weak to begin with.

Architecturally, how boring is the course?!   How many times do you want to repeat the same boring green complex?  Look at each complex and you'll see some sort of circular green with 1/2 bunkers short and left, and 1/2 bunkers short and right.  There seems to be almost no imagination.  

Look at the wide variety of complexes at Bethpage, Pebble, and even a course like Southern Hills, a course that I wasn't impressed with in 2001.  

This years open doesn't feel like an Open, it feels like the PGA Championship.  

Maybe with all these scoring records, the USGA will finally get some balls and do something with the equipment.  Perhaps the best way at protecting par, which seems to be the ultimate goal, would be to solve the problem at the source.  I don't enjoy seeing someone drive the ball 385 yards on a 460 yard par 4 having only 80 yards into the green.  

I don't care who goes 25 under in the US Open, but lets have them do it on a golf course that requires good shots and contains some interesting golf holes.  

Maybe this is why the US Open wasn't played at OF in over 75 years.

[Andrew_Roberts]

I hope we have a somewhat 1974 score next year, but I hope it's not because of course setup but because of a bunch of howling wind.

[tonyt]

Guys, c'mon.

There are only two players better than -5 through 54 holes.

It isn't brutal, but it also isn't easy enough to be saddened by this being the US Open test.

A large number of great players among the top 10-15 players on the leaderboard indicate this Championship is very properly identifying those players.

[Bruceski]

Justin,

You're right. Very boring golf course. I can't tell one hole from the next. Very little to remember after it's all done.

And...NBC has decided to pump in FAKE bird songs -- reminiscent of CBS a few years back. That's when you know you can trust the coverage   .

[Kevin_Reilly]

And...NBC has decided to pump in FAKE bird songs -- reminiscent of CBS a few years back. That's when you know you can trust the coverage   .

I thought I was the only one noticing those damn bird tapes.  It gets grating after a while.

[Mike Hendren]

There is a BIG difference between a boring course and a course that LOOKS boring when televised.  Play at the 17th was fascinating to watch today.   A lot of "told you so's" went begging today.  Sure, everybody drove it a mile, but the champion demonstrated superior control - length and distance  - with his irons, solid short putting and outstanding pace on longer putts.  I think OF held up well and I am reluctant to think it favored any type of game.

Regards,

Mike

[Matt Kardash]

The bunker placement on OF almost seems like a Dick Wilson course where every hole has a bunker front right and front left. MInd you this course has more room to run the ball onto the green than the average Wilson course.

Maybe the course plays better than it looks. All I know is that on tv it just looks dull and repetitive.

[TEPaul]

I don't know why Sunday was so different but that looked like a real US Open day to me. Good pin positions, some subtle false fronts and obviously pretty damn fast green speeds and some pretty firm surfaces for approach shots. I haven't seen that many 6-10 ft par putts (and missed ones) in a while. The elevation change arrow is something I've also never seen before in a telecast. It's interesting since elevation changes are hard to pick up on TV.

[Matt_Ward]

The real question that got answered on Sunday was how pitiful the play was. How much of that is attributable to the course or to overall final round pressure? I really believe some of the players would have been throwing up on themselves even if they played a local muni -- the play was really that bad! You have to give the course some credit but on the whole Olympia Fields was truly a B-O-R-I-N-G Open in the likes of Congressional a few years ago and even Oakland Hills / South. I do like the layout but the tournaments didn't have the flavor and feel of an Open -- it looked more like a PGA Championship at best and a regular tour event at worst.

I'm not advocating that the USGA use a "Carnoustie" type set-up but the rota of American courses capable in hosting an Open from a course and logitical perspective is quite small.

Chicago is a great hotbed for golf and it's fans deserve respect, but watching from comforst of my living room I was amazed at just how "uneventful" the championship was although Jim Furyk deserves high marks for his play. But, was Furyk's overall play REALLY in the same vein as Nicklaus at Baltusrol in '80 or Tiger at Pebble in '00?

For that reason I'm so psyched to see our Open go to the heavyweight of courses next year in Shinnecock and with the exception of Torrey the line-up through 2009 looks absoluetly solid indeed!

P.S. I loved how the par-4 12th played ditto the par-3 17th --too bad there weren't more holes like that!

[Brad Klein]

Let's not confuse one thing here. The OFCC green crew, including superintendent David Ward, were doing what they are told to for the event and had no control over mowing patterns, when to cut rough, etc. That's exclusively the call of the USGA - Tom Meeks, Tim Moraghan and other senior staffers. That holds, as well, for grounds chairman Terry Lavin, who is simply an observer and columnist (for the Chicago Sun-Times) last week and actually took the USGA to task for topping off the rough lightly on Tuesday afternoon.

I find the conspiracy scenarios absurd. The ground was soggy and poorly draining clay, even if the surface was not, and the course never fully dried out and firmed, esp. the rough.  They also had an unusual wind, which allowed the last 3 holes to play down wind - very uncharacteristic.  Having said that,they are driving the ball criminal distances and made a mockery of the course set up - as they would have of any set up.

[tlavin]

I'm finally up for air after a week of Open hell at my club.  I say hell just because of the hours, but it was a great experience.  The golf course you saw on Sunday was close to what OFCC is capable of producing in terms of pain.  The rough could have been more difficult, but I gotta tell you, it was close to seven inches by Sunday.  The problem on Thurs and Fri was the greens being too soft.  We politely suggested that the rough be left alone because of the soft conditions, but the USGA stuck to their guns.  And guess what, they proved to be largely correct.  If the rough was much higher, and the course was as firm as it usually is, there would have been a lot of "hacking in the heather" which is exactly what they did not want, even though club members and tv viewers have become accustomed to that during other opens, most notably at Bethpage.  The course setup there was way over the top and it was less than intimidating at Olympia, but we wound up with a pretty great Open nonetheless.

I cannot tell you how crazy it is to see these guys blowing it past the crosswalks.  The course played with the wrong wind (North) that left virtually all of the long holes down wind and these guys were hitting driver/slob wedge into 470 yard holes.  It's inhuman.

Final thought: Everybody likes to bash the USGA.  Usually they get criticized because the setup is too hard.  This time the players loved the setup, but the media were not at all generous.  Going through an open as a member and as a grounds chairman is like being an AA member.  You had better take it one day at a time and trust in a higher power.  In this instance the higher power is Tom Meeks.  That guy is a superstar.

[Mike Hendren]

 Having said that,they are driving the ball criminal distances and made a mockery of the course set up - as they would have of any set up.

While I agree that driving distance is out of hand, it looks more like a misdemeanor than a federal offense.   I find it fascinating that only four players broke par, two by a single shot.  Fairway width and rough height appeared more reasonable than past opens, greens were relatively large and everybody thinks the course was boring.  What am I missing here?  Was iron play as poor as Johnny lamented?  Is distance over-rated?  Is distance over-rated beyond some threshold?
Why did so many leaders bogey the first?

Maybe I should be banned from the treehouse because I just don't care.  Everybody I know plays the big-headed driver.  I refuse to pay $450 just so I can miss the green with a 6-iron instead of a 4-iron.  

Mike

[tlavin]

Davis Love had an interesting comment about the first hole.  A reporter asked him if he agreed that the first was easy, since it was "so reachable".  I'll paraphrase his response, "it might be an easy hole on most other days, but this is the U.S. Open.  People will play it differently and more conservatively and they'll be nervous."  I watched player after player get tentative after their tee ball.  I watched a bunch of players dump it in the fairway bunkers.  I watched Nick Price go bunker to bunker and make a six.  If the first was in the middle of the course, they would have killed it, just like they killed #6 which is a MUCH tougher hole, truth be told.

[Matt_Ward]

Brad:

Who's blaming anyone at the club?

The issue really is about the fact that the Open 36-hole record was broken in the first two days and then you get this uninspired play for the final 18 holes -- I had to "force" myself to watch the final 18 holes as absolutely no drama was produced. I like Olympia Fields but sometimes the way the championship plays out goes a long way in determining whether a site has the Open credentials for a return engagement. That's not a fault but a clear fact. Credit certainly to Furyk but in a few years this Open will be quickly forgotten

Also, when holes have wind coming from another direction that's the way the cookie crumbles. Does that mean the course can only show fire if the wind plays from the southwest?

The issue was that certain players (most notably Tiger) failed to adjust their game plan when it became obvious by the end of the second day that an aggressive posture was needed to make birdies and avoid laying back sooooooooo far in the fairways to put more pressure on one's mid-iron game.

[Bob_Huntley]

Does anyone remember the movie, 'Death on the Nile.' In it, the Indian purser of the Nile steamer, apologized to the assembled guest for some small oversight in these terms, "I grovel in mortification."

As someone said earlier, it was the most boring Open of recent years but we cannot blame the course. Singh, Price, Mayfair, Romero, O'Meara, Calcavecchia, stunk out the joint and should be grovelling. I have followed Nick Price since he was a junior player in Rhodesia and have never, ever, seen as weak a performance as his on the final day.

Furyk's precision was almost Hoganesque and he will probably win a couple more major titles.

[TEPaul]

It seems to me that for a time everybody of the type on here was upset with the USGA for rough that was too much for the US Open---they said it put too much of a premium on the  super straight "Open" type golfer like a Pavin, Simpson, North and didn't produce a real representative champion. They said it cut down too far on the heroic recovery shot out of the rough--the "iffy" shot at its best! Then they gave us Pinehurst #2 with the rough cut down by Open standards. Everyone seemed to like that but now they gave it to us again at OFCC and everyone's complaining about the course, the players playing badly and the USGA.

Make up your minds! One thing or another. This time it appeared to be something in between. And I don't really buy the fact that almost an entire Open Sunday field just played badly out of some odd coincidence. Something was going on at OFCC on Sunday that looked like some interesting stuff to me. Many in contention were making birdies and bogies--probably due to something interesting about the course. Isn't that the way it's supposed to be in a US Open? What's boring about that?

As for Jim Furyk--yes he really was sort of Hoganesque in that tournament and that's what wins Opens!

[Paul OConnor]

The usual bitching and moaning, ending with TEPaul and his usual insightful and erudite observations.