Erin Hills, the ground game?

[Carl Johnson]

Never been there.  Wouldn't know of it but for this website.  Just saw about 2 hrs. preview on The Golf Channel.  (Eventually the ball hits the ground.)  Is this a course where playing the ground game is key, approaches or otherwise?  Does it require great ground game skills?  Just askin'.  Hard for me to tell from TV, except maybe on 2nd shot to 18, if you can get there.  But, second question, is it fair to ask about the ground game skills on a very long approach?

[Matt Glore]

I don't think so, it will target golf at the pins.  I think the course lends itself on par 5s to roll some up.  There are a lot of bunkers short center of greens.  The course can/will play long, but the big hitters will still have short irons into many holes.  2 of the 4 par 5s the field will have wedge into.  False fronts and run off areas left and right of the greens will be it's defense. 

[Matt MacIver]

I don't think so either.  I tried some ground shots and the greens are so elevated (think PH #2 at times) that a long running shot was just too risky, even for me - the pros will hoist it up and get some spin.  Closer to the green they may putt vs. chip.  Chambers Bay had way more ground game options - perhaps because of the design but certainly due to the condition that week. 

[Phil McDade]

Carl:


EHills has a lot of up-down-up to it; tees that are elevated, to fairways below, with greens perched (severely, in a few cases) above the fairway. So in the main, I don't think we'll see too much ground-game approaches into greens. You definitely won't see it at 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15 or 16.


Interestingly, the four holes perhaps best suited for it open and close the round -- the curving par 5 1st, where the hole sort of flows into the green, and fun and short par 4 2nd, with a tiny, inverted tea-cup green that maybe the pros might be a bit intimidated spinning a wedge for the approach. I saw a variety of approaches on the ground during the US Am a few years back.


I can maybe imagine a ground approach on 17, the long par 4 with no bunkers, and the long par 5 18th, in part because those holes may play with the prevailing wind, and I can see an imaginative player not going aerial on those holes going at the greens.


Maybe ground approaches into 5 and 6 (front pin only) -- again, holes playing with the prevailing wind -- and maybe on 12, which is the rambunctious par 4 with trouble around the green, but open in front.

[Mike Wagner]

Never been there.  Wouldn't know of it but for this website.  Just saw about 2 hrs. preview on The Golf Channel.  (Eventually the ball hits the ground.)  Is this a course where playing the ground game is key, approaches or otherwise?  Does it require great ground game skills?  Just askin'.  Hard for me to tell from TV, except maybe on 2nd shot to 18, if you can get there.  But, second question, is it fair to ask about the ground game skills on a very long approach?

Not for these guys .. you'll see a completely aerial game (from the fairway).

[Jeff_Lewis]

I am curious about people who have played this or are at the tournament - what are your thoughts?


Are there too many elevated greens?  The false front/runoff thing is fine in small doses but on TV seems like a pretty steady diet.


Is the course generally firmer at this time of year than it is now?  How about wind - generally more than now or similar?


How about the bunker sand - any descriptions? 


Thanks.

[Phil McDade]

Jeff:


The course played much firmer -- and from my standpoint, was much more enjoyable to watch players take on -- during the 2011 U.S. Amateur. Balls were flying around the place,and it played (and felt, walking on it) really linksy.


The recent rains -- and more broadly a very wet spring here, with little time for much drying out -- have clearly softened the course. Today was a bit windy -- standard for that property, not over the top.


There are several uphill approach shots -- the course sort of teases you in the opposite way, because 1 and 2 are approached at the same level as the fairway, or even a touch below the player. But 3, 4 (!), 6, 7 (!!), 8 potentially, 10 potentially, 11, 14 (!!), and 15 (!!) all feature uphill shots. But -- two of the par 3s are downhill (9 at least a club's worth), and the course ends with a stretch of relatively flat holes in 16, 17, and 18.


I hope it firms up and dries out and get we some wind -- it's a fun course to watch in those conditions. But right now, it's playing as I feared it might when I first visited in 2011 -- it's target practice out there.


Bunker sand is what you might find in many Midwestern courses -- pretty dense and firm, good to play out of, maybe even a bit denser with the recent rains.

[David_Tepper]

The announcers I have heard in the pre-tournament shows and during today's internet broadcast have all said the course will not play like a links in terms of landing a ball 20-30 yards short and bouncing/rolling it on the green. A number of the greens have fronting bunkers, which makes run-up shots problematic. As noted above, a number of the greens are quite elevated, which also makes run-up difficult.

However, on shots played within 5-10 yards of the green, some players today were bumping their pitch/chip shots on the ground to the green, rather than pitching them directly on to the green. There is plenty of short grass surrounding most of the greens.

[Jeff_Lewis]

Thanks, Phil.   The Amateur is played so much later in the summer after things have baked out.  Probably not a great "test" of conditions.   We have been remarking how insanely good all the NY area courses are now and 3-4 weeks ago they were pretty grim.   But June is our lushest time - by August things are pretty challenging. 

[Phil McDade]

Jeff:


In a thread about EHills during the US Am, I expressed a wish that Davis could maybe use his powers at the USGA to somehow switch dates w/ the PGA Championship. My fear about Wisconsin's weather and this tournament is almost exactly how this played out -- a wet spring, a few drenching summer thunderstorms, and you're left with a course that isn't playing the way I think its designers envisioned. I'm still hopeful conditions will get tougher this weekend.

[Phil McDade]

The announcers I have heard in the pre-tournament shows and during today's internet broadcast have all said the course will not play like a links in terms of landing a ball 20-30 yards short and bouncing/rolling it on the green. A number of the greens have fronting bunkers, which makes run-up shots problematic. As noted above, a number of the greens are quite elevated, which also makes run-up difficult.

However, on shots played within 5-10 yards of the green, some players today were bumping their pitch/chip shots on the ground to the green, rather than pitching them directly on to the green. There is plenty of short grass surrounding most of the greens.

David:


This is why switching to Fox has its downsides   I wonder if any of the announcers making those observations had been to EHills during the US Amateur in 2011. The course that year was in terrific shape -- really dry and bouncy and hard in spots, which led many a player to think twice about pulling driver on the tee. Balls were flying all over the place, with really long roll-outs, and it played pretty tough but fair. It played as much like a links course as I'd ever seen outside of a true links.


The incongruity, of course, is the elevated nature of several of the approach shots into greens -- not all of them, but several. And two of the par 3s are downhill, so they don't lend themselves very well to a links-like approach.


I'm not sure I'd agree that "a number" of greens have fronting bunkers -- 1 and 2 don't, and those are holes designed to encourage some ground play, as is 17 and perhaps even 12 in some cases. Some holes with fronting bunkers -- 8 comes to kind -- are holes played with uphill approach shots in many cases, so the test is deliberately an aerial one.

[Bill Crane]

One of the pieces during the telecast described the natural flow and undulations of the terrain.

However, while there is movement and slope to the fairways, it looks to me that there was grading that smoothed out and sanitized much of the natural undulations and micro undulations.

I know from tons on experience on older courses that natural drainage itself can create interesting movement in the land.  Perhaps farming/tilling the land reduced the mid to smaller size terrain movements?

Thoughts ?    Am I overthinking this ?

[Phil McDade]

Bill:


Maybe...the undulations at EHills are rather pronounced; just look at some of the photo threads in this link:


http://www.golfclubatlas.com/forum/index.php/topic,64609.0.html


I'd say it's a distinctly different kind of fairway movement than what you might experience at The Old Course, which is probably the poster child for micro-undulations on what is a distinctly flat site. EHills is not flat by any means; it's pure glacial moraine country, with big, bold movements in the land. But -- also remember -- it was used not too long ago for grazing cows, and I'm sure there by necessity was "smoothing" of the land to turn it into a golf course. But really, not much dirt was moved around there -- what you see out there is largely what it was 20 years ago.


Having said all that, it's pretty easy to find a not-flat lie out there in the fairway. You're likely to find more flat lies in the fairways at Milwaukee CC, probably the state's best course, than EHills.

[David_Tepper]

Phil M. -

I am sure you are right about how much firmer & faster the course played in 2011 for the US Am.

That being said, I think the Golf Channel & Fox announcers are referring primarily to how shots into the greens will be played during this US Open. Based on what I have seen so far, it looks like most of the greens favor an aerial shot vs. landing short and bouncing the ball on to the greens.

DT