US OPEN GROUNDS CREW - ROUND ONE
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Ryan Wyckoff's U.S. Open Diary
Thursday, June 15
Round One -- A Superintendant's Perspective
Today was the first day of tournament play, so it was very interesting to see how the course shaped up and how well it met the expectations of the USGA. All in all, they were pleased. Their goal is to find the best overall player, and typically that means protecting par...and that they did as only one player was able to post a sub-par round.
Conditions today were different with gusty winds and bright sun making the course a little
more firm and more difficult and the rough getting tougher.
As tough as it was, it was interesting to hear some of the players say that they expected the conditions today to be the easiest especially since they also had to deal with the wind today. The course is playing longer than the 7,200 yard layout might indicate. With long rough, tree-lined fairways and numerouse doglegs, accurately placing each shot is a necessity of scoring well.
For those that were able to keep it in the fairway, they were able to score. I followed Tiger a bit and I don't think he hit more than one fairway on the front nine -- and that was evident in his score. If you hit the fairway, you have a chance to reach your target on the green...but if you miss it, your scrambling.
This morning the greens were stimping in the high 11's....they are not necessarily scary fast. If you recall, I told you that last night we did not cut the greens. I was not with the USGA committee members tonight so I do not know exactly what might have been discussed, but we were told to single cut the greens tonight and cut them again tomorrow so that should speed it up back into the 12 range.
The greens are firm making it harder to hold shots --especially when approaching from the round. Without the extra spins these guys can create when hitting from the fairway, the balls are taking big bounces. Because of the sloping undulating greens, they need to stay below the hole.
If anyone had a chance to see the hole locations, you'll see that most of the pins are tucked in corners. We knew this would be the case as we mostly had holes in the center of the greens during practice rounds so to protect those corners from excessive wear and tear. The pins will still be on the edges for the rest of the tournament.
I am responsible for working the front 9. On tHe first hole you can't even put a pin in the center...you cant see undulations on tv...it may look like you can put them there but you can't.
Like I said, there were lots of comments from players on the difficulty of the rough, but there were no comments from players on hole locations. They only mentioned that it was hard to get it to the area they want from the rough.
Tomorrow it will be interesting to see if anyone approaches the course differently -- if they learned anything from today. Some will, some won't. My guess is the players with a score of +11 or better will make the cut.
RYAN'S PRIOR REPORTS
DAY 1 - GETTING TO KNOW THE COURSE: A SUPERINTENDANTS PERSPECTIVE
DAY 2 - KEEPING IN TOUCH WITH THE COURSE, A SUPERINTENDENTS PERSPECTIVE
DAY 3 - THE SUPERINTENDENTS FINAL PREP
http://www.oga.org/club/scripts/view/view_insert.asp?pg=home&GRP=&IID=50567&NS=&APP=106The superintendent at the OGA course at Tukwila, Ryan Wyckoff, is writing a diary and posting it on their website. He is cutting the greens on the front side. This is his second, open, being Asst Supt at Pebble Beach when Tiger won. This is his fourth report. You can use the link to get to the older entries. Have fun, I'm off to Astoria.