This is the site of the next major. Really? Is it worthy? I'm just not getting it. It looks like pinball golf, random bounces and tricked up runouts. It looked that way at the U.S. Am and I've seen nothing since to persuade me otherwise.
Yes, I've never played it. Yes, I recognize that my take on the course lacks a lot of merit as a result. But, apart from the understandable Pac NW boosterism, I've seen very little favorable chatter. At the risk of offending Richard Choi and the several other locals who have been beating a quiet drum, I ask: What am I missing? This is shaping up as a most forgettable site for a U.S. Open. Go ahead, beat me up. Some bum is likely to do the same to Chambers Bay.
Will be interesting to see what JS does this June
UNIVERSITY PLACE, Wash. – Once his deficit became insurmountable, Jordan Spieth turned to his caddie/instructor Cameron McCormick and asked what he would have shot “on a normal golf course.”
“Probably a 72,” McCormick replied.
Alas, Chambers Bay is not a normal golf course.
Spieth shot 12-over 83 on Tuesday to finish two rounds of stroke play at the U.S. Amateur at 155, six shots below the cut line. Near the scoring tent afterward, the 16-year-old from Dallas couldn’t remember the last time he’d posted such a high score.
“That golf course is just ridiculously difficult,” said Spieth, Golfweek’s fourth-ranked junior. “People are saying all around that it’s unfair. But it’s not too unfair that you can’t shoot a 78.”
That, it turns out, is all Spieth would have needed to make the cut at the U.S. Amateur, a year after being knocked out in a playoff for the final spot. His putting was “pathetic,” and to get the ball close on these rock-hard fescue greens that are quickly becoming an issue, particularly in the late-afternoon sun, Spieth said, “you literally have to land the ball in a 1-yard circle to get it within 20 feet.”
“It can be done,” he added, “but I just didn’t do it.”
Still, Spieth lauded the made-for-HD layout that will host the U.S. Open in 2015.
“I absolutely love the golf course,” he said, “but I just felt like the greens were too hard, too difficult.”