"I played #2 the summer after the C&C redo then again this past December. The course was amazingly fun both times, but steps were underway to toughen the course during my recent visit. Grounds crews were peeling back rows of sod from the edges of the fairway, narrowing things considerably."
Rob that's perceptive and it's certainly worthy of being pointed out. Can you guess what going on with that?
It's understandable you would think it was done to toughen up the course for the tournament. However, that is not the case.
There are a handful of modifications that have been done since they re-opened the course - a bit more than what you were referring to. All of these things were done by the C&C team. They weren't able to complete every single thing before re-opening. That was understood all along. The plan was always to come back and massage it here and there.
But you are right that they put sandy waste areas in certain places. That's part of the C&C plan. The biggest work along those lines I saw was about 8 feet at one point. But like I say that's part of the C&C plan. It is definitely not a regression to the previous version of the course and it is definitely not your standard USGA toughening.
You can be quite sure they are entirely keen to do this right - retaining the playing angles, etc. The team there is very smart and they would never be dumb enough to muck up that project. If they were messing it up you can be sure I'd be grousing about it.
"With additional plantings of wire grass, I'm curious how much of a crap shoot it will be in the unkempt areas off the fairway."
Again, an understandable point of view. And you're right that there will be an element of chance - maybe you'll get a workable lie and maybe you'll get one that is more challenging. That's what you get when you play the shot incorrectly. For me, that is a vastly more interesting golfing equation than you'll usually find. There is going to be a lot of room off the tee - which is almost unheard of for a US Open. But it will also matter which side of the fairway you hit it on - also virtually unheard of for that tournament. Actually, that's probably my No. 1 criticism of American courses in general. That is, far too few courses offer actual strategy off the tee. With the large majority you're simply trying to hit it in the fairway - with little difference or advantage to be found on either side of the narrowish fairway. To moi that's simply a less interesting and less enjoyable design. Why would you want to do that? But I digress.
Your standard US Open rough is radically deficient in playing interest. It has all the charm and intrigue of an Excel spreadsheet. The thing about dealing with the native plant is that you shouldn't have hit it in there in the first place. With those very wide fairways if you did hit it in there then you don't really have the right to complain. You deserve to be challenged. And some challenges are far superior in a design and playing sense to other ones.
Well, I could blabber on but I think you get the idea. If you have any other questions I'll be glad to give you my point of view for whatever that's worth. But I would be careful not to jump to wrong conclusions. This project could hardly be handled better. It's a long process and if the brilliant work they've done doesn't work for somebody then well...good luck.