[JohnV]

Yesterday Tom Meeks gave a talk at the annual USGA Conference here in Pittsburgh regarding Site Selection and Course Setup for USGA Championships.  You should all see if one of these is scheduled somewhere near you.  They are free and you might learn something interesting about Hyperodes Weevils.

Here are my notes:

He is very adamant about the need to remove trees from courses.  He praised Oakmont along with other courses that are removing trees a number of times.

#1 thing in Site Selection is the quality of the course.  Can the course be made firm and fast?  Can the greens be made firm and fast?  Will the course be the best test possible for the players?

Everything else is a distant second.  Certainly having available space for the facilities required is important.  The facilties at the club such as locker rooms and office space are less important as they can be handled.

Having a good volunteer base is very important along with good community support.

The first thing that happens is that the club needs to invite the USGA.  Then the staff makes a site visit.  After that the appropriate committee members will visit and decide.

[Mark Studer]

John- It was of interest to me , and I'm sure of interest to some  chicago posters, that Tom Meeks read Beverly's  letter of invitation to host a US Senior Am to the crowd of over 250 in pittsburgh. The club officials from Beverly were in Pittsburgh to play Oakmont with me  a few years ago and they are setting the pace to revive a club's  "GOLF PRIORITY" . So many older clubs with golden age designs try to become "all things" to "attract" new members and they forget that the game and playing field are where  the game is played , not the ballroom or swimming pool. Tom mentioned that the course is the #1 reason the USGA chooses to accept an invitation to conduct their championship at a club. I think the playable and walkable course is still the #1 way to attract members too. Beverly gets it , again!!!

[Kevin_Reilly]

He is very adamant about the need to remove trees from courses.  He praised Oakmont along with other courses that are removing trees a number of times.

Did he name any other courses?  Would be curious as to how widespread the "Tree Management Movement" is.

[JohnV]

Thanks Mark, I forgot to mention the Beverly letter.

Kevin, Either Darin Brevard who is an agronomist for the USGA in West Chester did a specific talk on trees on golf courses and how they are bad.  Either he or Tom put up a slide with a list of about 15 classic courses that have starting tree removal programs.  Among them were Winged Foot and Oak Hill.  Sorry I didn't write down the list.  Brevard made the case that trees should come down for various reason, among them healthier turf, shrinking fairway lines and how they either take away strategy or double penalize players by coming between bunkers and the target.

[Brad Klein]

Kevin, recent major tree management/removal plans include the following courses. This is just a partial, suggestive list:

NY
Shinnecock Hills
National Golf Links of America
CC of Rochester
CC of Buffalo

CT
CC of Waterbury
Yale
Shuttle Meadow
Wampanoag

PA
Aronimink

NH
Lake Sunapee

Florida
Mountain Lake

MN
Minikahda
Northland

OH
Scioto
Inverness
Hyde Park
Brookside

IL
Ravisloe
Beverly

AZ
Desert Forest

NC
Pine Needles
Forsyth

[Scott_Burroughs]

How about Olympic?  They're thinning out trees quite well, according to the members here.  U.S. Junior Am this year and U.S. Am in 2008 (interestingly enough, not on USGA web site).

Isn't Plainfield taking out trees, as well?  Once was scheduled for Senior Open in 2005(?), I believe.

[BCrosby]

"He is very adamant about the need to remove trees from courses."

Good, but does that mean that the USGA will change its stripes, take advantage of more open space and set up wider fairways with lots of playing angles for the next US Open? Or does it mean that the USGA just wants some trees removed?

"[T]he course [should] be the best test possible for the players[.]"

Hard to argue with that. A little like being in favor of highway safety.

But does that mean the USGA will continue to select courses that they can set up to best resist sub-par scoring? Or does it mean that they are now ready to risk low scores in order to test a wider range of golfing skills?

Just asking. A guy can always hope, can't he?

Bob

[SPDB]

Do your comments imply that tree removal will become a mandate vis-a-vis tournament selection?

[JohnV]

I doubt very much if the USGA will widen fairways.  They consider driving accuracy to be an integral part of the US Open test.  They will continue to keep in them in the 25-27 yard range.  Tom is also very much in favor of even-par being the winning score at the US Open.  That was obvious from his glee that only 3 birdies were made in the final match of the US Amateur and how he said he didn't feel that anyone would have broken par if it had been the US Open being played on that Sunday.  Of course, he will be leaving the job in two years so perhaps his successor will consider other ways to do things.

[gookin]

I attended the Pittsburgh session.  While the bias towards tree removal keeps growing (there was a whole session committed to tree management), based on Tom Meeks talk the #2 feature of a USGA set up ,right behind firm and fast greens, is narrow fairways 26 to 28 yards wide with six feet of second cut rough.  That means to me that picking a national champion who can drive the ball straight for four days is more important to the USGA than giving the field the opportunity to experience the strategic choices intended by the architect.

Will we ever get to the point that clubs who restore the style of their classical architects and restore original fairways widths may turn down USGA events to preserve their fairways?

[JohnV]

I would like to see the USGA have wider fairways where there were good strategic options.  I also don't like the way they move them away from bunkers at times so that a bunker that should have been at least on the edge of a fairway ends up 6 or 8 yards into the rough.  I also wish that clubs would return their fairways to their "correct" width after the USGA leaves town, but I'm sure there are plenty of people at the clubs that argue against doing that.

Fortunately they don't narrow fairways for most of their events.

[mike_malone]

 The narrowing of the fairways is a major drawback to the USGA setup.If the course was designed so that a full shot was expected from various parts of the fairway,but some parts afforded better approaches than others then narrowing the fairway turns the course into something else--not the one designed.After all what makes that course great? The designer!!!
    There was a PGA event(i believe in the Atlanta area--a Amex World event).I enjoyed it better than any all year.It was firm and fast and won in single digits under.

    The recognition that encrouching trees are a problem seems inconsistent with the narrow fairways.Let's be patient-they are coming along one step at a time.

[Mike Vegis @ Kiawah]

The USGA needs to talk to the SC Office of Ocean and Coastal Resourse Management and other various state governmental agencies.  You can't touch a tree around here without an act of God in South Carolina, especially along the coast...

[mike_malone]

Is Darin Brevard's presentation available?I just went on the USGA site and could not find it.

[JohnV]

mayday, I don't know, but according to the USGA website his e-mail address is dbevard@usga.org.

[Mark Studer]

Two yards of first cut of rough on each side(Oakmont's is 3/4 of an inch high) added to the fairway widths that Gookin quoted makes the hitting area 30 yards to 32 yards wide in the drive area.  Is that too narrow with today's equipment and skill level to be a fair test ?  Is  it too narrow for everyday member play?  With the ever increasing cost to maintain  "primped" fairways does it make sense to grow less expensive rough ? Does the treehouse think 30-32 yard wide drive zones eliminate or reduce "strategic challenges"?

[Paul Richards]

Mark:

>Tom Meeks read Beverly's letter of invitation to host a US Senior Am to the crowd of over 250 in pittsburgh.

Great!  Would love to hear more on this.


>Tom mentioned that the course is the #1 reason the USGA chooses to accept an invitation to conduct their championship at a club... Beverly gets it , again!!!

Thanks for the kind words.

To read up on Beverly's championship pedigree, please see my history at "My Home Course."

For those interested, Beverly is celebrating its 100th Anniversary in 2008 and has invited the USGA to hold their Senior Amateur Championship here.  The restoration by Ron Prichard is 'under snow' - literally! - at the moment and the members are excitedly looking forward to the thaw so that we can play the restored Ross classic.  

Greens have been expanded to their original size, tees squared, bunkers all redone in Ross style and many trees removed.  Having walked the course a number of times this winter, I look forward to getting to tee it up as well!

[John_Lovito]

Scott,

You are correct, Plainfield has been steadily taken out trees since the restoration began about four years ago.  This winter, at the suggestion of the USGA, more trees have been removed primarily around tee boxes and greens to allow for more sunlight and hence better turf growing conditions.

John

[SPDB]

John - Don't mean to repeat, but did Meeks say anything about tree removal as a requirement or strong criteria in course selection? What were the context of his remarks? i can't tell what bearing, if any, they had on how the USGA goes about selecting sites.

[JohnV]

I really don't think it had any real bearing on the selection process unless it was a case where they felt that the trees impinged so much that it made the course not play they way they wanted.  He just feels that removing trees is a good thing, primarily because it allows them to get the course firm and fast.

[JohnV]

Does the treehouse think 30-32 yard wide drive zones eliminate or reduce "strategic challenges"?

Mark, I think that when very high caliber players are involved, it usually makes more sense to narrow fairways than to leave them wide.  This is true unless the greens complexes of such a quality that you really have to be in the right place to get it close (ala Augusta).  On many good and even great courses, the average player might get a significant advantage by being in one place vs another, but the true expert would have the skill to attack the flag from anywhere in the fairway.  Therefore in order to truely test their ability a narrow fairway works better than a wide one with strategic advantages from one side or the other.

Back when Jack Nicklaus could hit those high 2-irons that stopped quickly did he care which side of the fairway he was on if one side allowed him to bounce it in and the other required him to fly it in?  Probably not very much.

[ForkaB]

John

Very interesting post.  You seem to be implying that the USGA feels that just about all it's "Open" courses are somewhat deficient in terms of the relative challenge of their green complexes.  Do you really think this is so?  I'm not sure, but it sounds right, particularly when all the pros can now hit Nicklaus-like 220 yard shots that stop on a dime.  Of course, they are using 5-irons to do so............

Isn't another answer to their dilemma going for venues with the most challenging greens, which might just be some new Fazio or Stranz course, no?  It would certianly make for greater theatre than watching the big boys hacking it out of the cabbage all day.

[A_Clay_Man]

Couple of thoughts; Will the tree removal be sensitive to the occasioanl use of the shot tester? or, have the radical treemonishinalists become vogue?

Why can't the rough line ebb and flow, perhaps pinching-in at key spots, that will cause so much narrowness that the boys best think twice about the way-lay?

 Won't the fairway bunkers become irrelavant if surrounded by rough? or, Become More important, because they will be the lesser of the evil over the rough?

[JohnV]

Rich, I think that it might not be the case that the greens aren't challanging so much as there is not a significant enough difficulty in challange in coming in from one side of a wide fairway vs another.  Remember that they left the rough shorter at Pinehurst where the greens are arguably more challanging than some other courses, while that isn't the same as keeping the fairways wide, it did have a somewhat similar effect.  

Are their really strategic reasons to be on one side or the other of the fairways at Pebble Beach which would make keeping the fairways wider an advantage?  I've only played there once, but as I recall the real challange there is more the size of the greens requiring a precise shot than the difference in strategy you can employ from one side of a fairway vs the other.

I think I would like to see a somewhat shorter rough so that players can go at the green more often.  Maybe make the areas that were fairway the first cut rather than just a 6 foot strip on either side.

By the way, Tom did mention that for the Walker Cup at Chicago Golf Club they won't have a definitive first cut of rough because Chicago has never had one and didn't want one.  Instead they will bevel the rough up from lower to higher in the first 6 feet.

[Tags:]

Tags:

[Tags:]

Tags:

Call to undefined function theme_linktree()