Is it too early to talk about Carnoustie 2007?

[RJ_Daley]

Here is a nice link to look at the course:
http://www.carnoustie-open.co.uk/gcmaps/micromap3.php

Has anyone heard or read about how they intend to cultivate the rough this time around?  

There are a fine gaggle of Google links already begin to follow the Open this year.  I haven't found my question about rough on any of them yet, in only a cursory review of what is written so far...

[Kalen Braley]

I for one sure hope they set it up like last time so the best player can be randomly chosen....errr I mean identified  

I can't recall any other course setup I've seen where it literally looks like your trying to hit the ball down your street and try to hit it 250+ yards and have the ball come to rest on the street.  

[Dan_Callahan]

I hope it is very, very difficult. That, afterall, seems to be Carnoustie's clame to fame. I've never been there, but friends who have played the course say it is very long, kind of ugly, unspectacular, and really hard. Take away the really hard and you aren't left with much to recommend it.

[RJ_Daley]

The other thread that is on-going about a tournamint ball that is dialed back was the catalyst that got me turning my thoughts towards what might be in store at Carnoustie.  Of course the bowling alley FWs lined with lush rough must also be something that will have to be preconsidered by the players in their preparation.  I can't believe they will make that mistake again this time.  

Will Tiger again have a no driver approach like Hoylake?  I would think that if they anticipate the rough to be a factor, and narrowness in LZs to again be a feature, many more will go to driverless mentality.

And, a really long course won't be too long if Tiger can hit 'stingers' rolling along really far...

[Dan Kelly]

Dick --

Yes, it's too early.

Wait till after the Open is over.

Start counting backward from 100, and we'll proceed from there.

Warmest regards,
Dr. Dan the Gas Man

[RJ_Daley]

Dan, I'll get back to you to discuss this latest blizzard, after it is over, in a few days...  last golf scores last week, 98.94,90...87.....zzzzzz

[jg7236]

This is just my perspective and thoughts.  I don't know what the rave is about Carnoustie, of course the heritage and history that this course has endured, but in my opinion the course isn't that spectacular.

My father and I played their last August.  I didn't think the course was that interesting or challenging, my father felt the same.  I played great and most times when I play well I remember the golf course, not this golf course.  The things I felt that were interesting was the speed commuter train and the military shooting range adjacent to the course.

This is just my opinion.....

[Tommy Williamsen]

This is just my perspective and thoughts.  I don't know what the rave is about Carnoustie, of course the heritage and history that this course has endured, but in my opinion the course isn't that spectacular.

My father and I played their last August.  I didn't think the course was that interesting or challenging, my father felt the same.  I played great and most times when I play well I remember the golf course, not this golf course.  The things I felt that were interesting was the speed commuter train and the military shooting range adjacent to the course.

This is just my opinion.....

Dan, I can understand  that at first blush Carnoustie might not compare favorably with other links courses.  The ground is unspectacular.   I just don't understand how anyone can say that it is not challenging.  The wind is normally blowing like crazy and getting close to the pins is at best difficult.  The last three holes may be the best finishing holes in golf.

[Phil McDade]

Dick:

I've posted on this before, but will regurgitate it for those who may have missed it.

I walked the entirety of Carnoustie on the Monday before the Open Championship there in '99; Vijay and Parnevik and Bob Estes were already there practicing.

I'm not big on saying course set-ups are unfair, as everyone has to play the same holes. But I thought Carnoustie in '99 was borderline unfair, and by that I mean it was set up to yield -- in my view -- arbitrary results.

The course in '99 played (I recall) at 7,400+ yards -- and this was before the big technology (ball, mainly, but also clubs) explosion yielded much longer drives and longer iron shots with shorter clubs. That would've been OK with wide playing corridors, but the set-up was for fairly narrow fairways, decent rough about 10 feet wide, and absolute, can't-find-it hay after that. Combine all that with the wind that usually accompanies an Open, and I thought: This is nuts. Hitting the fairway seemed a pretty arbitrary matter, with little relevance for skill, but you had to play driver on many, many holes because of the overall length of the course, pre-technology explosion. A number of golf fanatics were walking the course, too, and a group of us -- some Americans, some Europeans -- all concluded it was a fairly ridiculous set-up. I predicted before it began that with any kind of weather, the winning score would be around +10; as it was, three tied at +6 in conditions that were fairly benign, for an Open.

I still argue that Lawrie's closing 67 was one of the greatest rounds shot in a major in the past half-century or so, right up there with Tiger's 65 at Augusta in '97, Jack's 64 at Augusta '65, Norman's 63 at Turnberry in '86, and Player's 64 at Augusta in '78. It was an unbelieveable round in tough conditions on an extremely severe course.

[Justin_Zook]

Excellent call on using "local.live.com".  It really is one of the best, if not the best websites/applications out there for looking out our earth from above.

[Tim Bert]

What's the highest combined winning score for a Master's, US Open and British Open in one season?  

We're off to a good start this year.  Without doing any research, I'd guess we've got a good chance of witnessing one of the most difficult scoring years in major championship history.

[Phil McDade]

Tim:

In the modern era for all four majors, 1959, 1963, 1966 and 1972 were all pretty tough years for scoring:

1959 -- aggregate score relative to par was -5 (M -4; USO +2, BO E; PGA -3)

1963 -- aggregate score was -5 (M -2; USO +9; BO -7; PGA -5) ((Brutally tough at TCC in Brookline for the US Open))

1966 -- aggregate score was -4 (M E; USO -2; BO -2; PGA E)

1972 -- aggregate score was -5 (M -2; USO +2; BO -6; PGA +1)

Interestingly, in three of those four years (save for '63), the British Open was held at Muirfield.

I can't find any years with higher aggregates than those. I think it might be higher this year.

[Matt_Sullivan]

I played the course for the first time a couple of weeks ago and was very impressed,. It probably helped that I played well, the day was a stunning one (not a cloud in the sky and about 14 deg celsius), the flowers were in bloom, and we zipped around in under 4 hrs as a fourball, but I really enjoyed the course and the round.

The first 5 holes wind around probably the best land, being routed through some nice dunes. I really liked 1,2 and 3; 4 playes out into the flat part of the course and is not that great a hole, but 5 returns to the dunes and has a great green. 6, the famous par 5 (Hogan's Alley was wider than I imagined) takes you out into the flatter part of the course. I found the next half a dozen or so holes the least interesting, the par fours (esp 8, 9, and 10) being a bit of slog (although good driving holes). I'm not going to complain about 11, 12 and 13 though, since I birdied all three! Feel free to PM me if you want a stroke by stroke description of this birdie run ;-)

The finish is great though -- 14 through 18 are tough but enjoyable holes. 15 particularly was a bit of an eye opener, a long dogleg left (after having mostly doglegs to the right on previous holes) that was a driver/four iron for me to the back flag. 16, 17 and 18 are brutal, but not unfair: very demanding but still enjoyable holes. I was surprised how tough the green was on 16 for a 240 yard par 3 (I made an 8 footer for bogey). I doubled 18 to shoot 76, which normally would leave me cursing, but didn't because 6 was one better than Jean managed and after driving into the bunker off the tee I tried a ridiculous shot to carry the burn into the wind with a four iron, and almost made it!

I tell you what, if there is someone in the clubhouse tied for the lead with someone standing on 15 tee, put all you can on the guy in the clubhouse

So all in all it was more fun that I had imagined. While it's true that the course loses some of the linksy charm after the first 6 or 7 holes, it turns into the sort of very tough but potentially fair test that is more Muirfield than TOC. It's got a good mix of shorter holes (eg 3 a shortish 4, 13 a short 3), longer holes (eg  16 a long 3, 18 a long 4), a routing that means you pretty much have to deal with a different wind direction on each hole (a mostly outside/inside loop like Muirfield), and no obviously weak holes (in that the less interesting ones are still tough). If the R&A gets the set up right and the weather co-operates (tough but not ridiculous) it will be a great Open

[G Jones]

When the Open was at Carnoustie in 1999, I was a 16 year old member of the Carnoustie Golf Club (not anymore - not 16! and not a member). We played the course with the narrow fairways and long rough that year, before and after the open, and only found it marginally more difficult than usual (and as a 6 handicap I had to hit greens in regulation despite being 5 ft 7 and playing it at 7000 yards). It is true that if you hit it in certain places it was almost impossible to extricate yourself (lots of courses have such places... ie. ponds!)... but the rough in general was just as it normally was - for years we'd had wetter than usual weather and the rough was always thick like that.

The press talked about fertilizing the rough, but that was actually a story made up by the press upon hearing that fertilizer had been used (the press didn't bother mentioning it had only been used in a very small number of tiny places where the rough was unusually thin - all they did was make it more uniform and therefore more fair).

And at the end of the day, Laurie's round was excellent, incredible even... but he isn't that good a player so if he could do that then most others could have done fairly well also.
The thing that beat the best players in the world wasn't the rough, or the course... it was their heads. Laurie, as a scotsman, didn't get himself into a negative mindset. If people hadn't moaned about the course I reckon the best score might have been 5 shots better over the week. Everyone left that Open wishing they'd just concentrated a little harder when their score wasn't going so good. The course beat them.


And finally... I'd just like to say that myself and almost everyone else I knew went out after the open and aged 16 beat Sergio's 89 comfortably, over the same setup :-)

[RJ_Daley]

Jonesie, very interesting comments.  Thanks for the perspective.     Do you see Tiger or top players crafting a "driverless strategy" like Tiger did last year?  Perhaps only if dirt dry conditions precede the event...?

[Rich Goodale]

Dick

Being able to hit an iron off the tee 95%+ of the time and win an Open is a serious weakness for a golf course.  This is why, to me at least, both Hoylake (2006) and the Old Course (2000) are just very good, but not at all "great" golf courses.

Carnoustie is a great golf course.  The best of the UK Open courses, without doubt (at least mine).  Having studied it in some detail over the past year,  I think that it will expose anybody who cannot or will not be ready to play every club in his bag, on almost every hole.

It will be fun.  Enjoy!

[RJ_Daley]

Rich, do you believe that the set-up committee and superintendent at Carnoustie would even consider letting the FWs get so dormant as we saw at Hoylake (if in the unlikely event that drought precedes the Open).  Or, would they be more likely to water enough to prevent the stinger low running ground game to its maximum as last year?  

Tiger was said to have been able to beat the field anywhere as long as he could stay in the FWs (which he did via the "driverless strategy".  The dry FWs there at Hoylake offered him the chance to still get adequate distance to desired LZs with roll out, and penalized the driver of other players by bounding the ball off FWs.

So, at Carnoustie, is the terrain and width adequate (if there are similar F&F FW conditions) to allow the low struck stinger to run enough to negate any advantage a driver might acquire via long roll-outs?  

As you say Rich, any course that allows driver to be put away is a chink in the armour of a truly great course.  But, must you also then say (assuming it is correct) that extremely dry and dormant hard ground negates any course to play great, if the roll-out to the desired LZ can be done with stingers?

[Rich Goodale]

Dick

The maintenance plan at Carnoustie this year is to stop watering the course around the beginning of June, and if (as the forecasters seem to believe) it is going to be a hot and dry summer, you'll see a lot of brown and maybe even a few puffs of dust at the Open.  The rough will be wispy and irregular, as it should be.

Vis a vis irons off the tee, I probably overstated above, as it was really only Tiger who ironed both the Old Course and Hoylake to death.  Also, in both those cases there was very little wind.  If there is not much wind at Carnoustie, a lot of irons can and will be hit off the tees, by Tiger and others, but if the wind gets up it will be hard to reach many of the long 4's in two if they are into the wind, unless you've got the stinger in your bag....

[D_Malley]

i seem to remember players in the last open at Carnoustie hitting irons off alot of tees strictly because of how narrow and penal the landing zones were off the tee.  the choice of hitting irons on these holes had nothing to do with the length of the hole.  for instance many players hit iron off a hole only to leave them with 215 yards into a par 4.  why are they doing that?  

i believe many players felt that leaving long 2nd shots was ok because if they miss the green on their approach from 215 out on a par four they still have a resonable chance at making par and will get bogey at worse.

isn't this a much smarter choice than risking hitting it in the hay off the tee with a driver just so you can hit 7 iron in.  but the risk is double or triple bogey.

is this exciting golf?
will this stategy be used at Oakmont also?