Winged Foot / Overall Impressions (from those who've never played the course)

[Phil Benedict]

On TV it looked like a lot of courses they play the Open or PGA on.  Tree-lined parkland course.  I think Oakmont will be more visually distinctive because there are no trees in the playing area.  The USGA will undoubtedly provide high rough, off course.

The biggest surprise to me was how wobbly the ball rolled on the greens, which was obviously due to the poa.

[Dan Kelly]

Hardly a golf course ever discussed here is one I wouldn't want to play -- and Winged Foot is not even close to being one of the exceptions. It looked outstanding, in every respect.

I think I'd like to play it the cool air of autumn, when the pretty trees would provide balm for the horrible thrashing the course would be dealing out.

It reminded me, in its relentless difficulty, of a course I love, but which gets little love around here: Hazeltine National.

I love Hazeltine because it's MY local monster, and because I played it enough times, when I was young, to know it a little bit, and because I've spent three entire weeks of my life there watching the best players in the world being humbled by it, and because one of those weeks was a week with my daughters, for the 2002 PGA  -- a very fond memory for all three of us.

I imagine that I'd feel the same way about Winged Foot if I lived in the neighborhood.

[Mike Benham]

What would be interesting is to see Bethpage Black with the kind of greens Winged Foot possesses. They might still be playing the "02 Open !!!

This probably deserve a separate topic but after watching the challenge of the greens at WFW, how will the USGA "defend par" at course such as Olympic Lake in 6 years?

The O Club has already ruined the 18th green (at the USGA's request?) and with the O Lake greens relatively flat, as compared to WFW, will they narrow the fairways even more?  

[Phil Benedict]

Like others on this thread, I think that with firm greens Winged Foot would have been fine without such high rough and narrow fairways.  Nobody was going to make many putts on those greens, and the winning score would have been 2-5 under.  What's wrong with that?

[ed_getka]

Mike B,
   Olympic Lake will be a 36 hole complex by the time the Open shows up, since the fairways will be so narrow they will have room for another course.

Matt,
    As I've mentioned before I walked the back nine of the West course last fall. I was impressed that the course didn't seem as brutally difficult as I had always imagined. I had had visions of bunkers over my head, greens pinched by bunkers where you had to walk single file onto greens, and greens are so fast and sloped as to make putting virtually impossible. What I actually found was a course that looked very demanding, but not impossible. I would definitely get my butt kicked by the course, but I think I would enjoy playing it.
    When I used to live in San Diego I would go to Torrey South when I thought I was playing well to see how well my game would hold up. I think Winged Foot would be a similar course, where I would want to play it when my game was on, and see how well I could hold up. Definitely not a course I would want to play everyday unless my game became dramatically better. I don't know if the fairway width in early October last year was normal width, but if so it would be too demanding of a driving test for me on a regular basis.
    I was suprised at how much trouble the pro's had with the greens after being there for a whole week. Were the greens playing as they usually do?

[Eric Franzen]

    I was suprised at how much trouble the pro's had with the greens after being there for a whole week. Were the greens playing as they usually do?

I spoke to the swedish players after each round during the whole week. The first days they mentioned that it was hard to predict how the green would hold the approach due to the fact that some were firmer than others.

The final two days they found the greens being extremly bumpy which practically made it impossible to putt on some holes.

[Garland Bayley]

Great green complexes, but what else?
Not particularly interested in playing there.

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