Was the 2nd hole at Merion...

[Ted Sturges]

...improved by moving the fairway up against the road to bring out of bounds into play? 

I'd be interested in opinions of why or why not this made the hole "better".

TS

[Phil McDade]

Ted:

I didn't necessarily mind the fairway up against the OOB; I just wish they didn't have bunkers floating in the rough on the left.

[Jason Thurman]

What exactly was so offensive about the bunkers floating in the rough on the left?

I thought the setup of the hole was great for an elite professional tournament. The fairway pushed up against the OB and the angle of the tee shot really brought disaster into play for anyone who wanted to get in position to reach in two and didn't execute.

I don't know that I'd want to play that hole every day if it was my home course, but I thought it created a compelling US Open hole.

[Brent Hutto]

It's fashionable on this forum to complain that a sand bunker is not generally a "hazard" at all for elite golfers today. They are just too good at playing the required shot from sand.

An obvious implication of that view is that to challenge elite golfers, one must find something they fear more than sand. So on some holes at Merion they take the bunker out of play by surrounding it with rough and bend the hole to one side to bring out of bounds into immediate proximity to the fairway.

Even the greatest golfers in the world fear OB. It influences their thinking and their choice of shots in a way that a bunker will not, whether surrounded by short grass or long.

[Tom_Doak]

Even the greatest golfers in the world fear OB. It influences their thinking and their choice of shots in a way that a bunker will not, whether surrounded by short grass or long.

OK, so let's say that a certain pro fears o.b. enough to aim 25 yards away from it, no matter what.  So now they have to aim at the left edge of the 2nd fairway and hope for the best, instead of aiming down the middle of the fairway as it was before it was moved.  Is that really a great set-up?

[Greg Tallman]

Even the greatest golfers in the world fear OB. It influences their thinking and their choice of shots in a way that a bunker will not, whether surrounded by short grass or long.

OK, so let's say that a certain pro fears o.b. enough to aim 25 yards away from it, no matter what.  So now they have to aim at the left edge of the 2nd fairway and hope for the best, instead of aiming down the middle of the fairway as it was before it was moved.  Is that really a great set-up?

No, it was bad and looked worse. Heck why not do the opposite and wrap the fairway around behind the bunker while pinching it in from the right. The safe play is left and probably blocked by the trees a bit, creating a chance but probably plenty of wayward second shots trying to go for the green. Seems like a better scenario.

[Brent Hutto]

Well in terms of inducing fear in the golfer's mind, it's an effective setup. They can't aim comfortably away from OB without making a shot into the rough uncomfortably likely. Placing the edge of the rough (instead of a 20 more yards of fairway width to the left) along that 25-yard safety line simply has to increase whatever effect that the OB creates in the first place.

I see it as a variation on the old "take one side of the hole out of play" that many players and coaches espouse. The setup of that fairway mowing seemed to me designed to cause the shot which takes OB out of play to bring deep rough into play. And vice versa.

Is it a great setup? Not to my mind. But it's effective for the purpose to which it was intended, undoubtedly. A great setup at Merion would have probably led to scores five to eight strokes lower than Justin Rose's...which would be fine by me. But if they want to keep scores high then some amount of "great setup" has to be sacrificed.

[Phil McDade]

What exactly was so offensive about the bunkers floating in the rough on the left?

I thought the setup of the hole was great for an elite professional tournament. The fairway pushed up against the OB and the angle of the tee shot really brought disaster into play for anyone who wanted to get in position to reach in two and didn't execute.

I don't know that I'd want to play that hole every day if it was my home course, but I thought it created a compelling US Open hole.

Because it makes it hard to reach the bunkers unless you fly it in there. If you want the better angle, sure, take on OOB. But if you want to bail out, put some risk there as well by having a fairway that runs up against the bunker (as was the case on some other holes this past week at MEast).

[Brent Hutto]

Phil,

The thick rough surrounding that bunker was at least as much of a "hazard" as the bunker itself. If someone bailed out well left of the OB and went in the bunker they'd be impeded in advancing the ball. But if they bailed out well left of the OB, missed the bunker and ended up in the deepest of the rough they've be impeded even more in advancing the ball. Hard to see any line of reasoning by which mowing down that 3, 4, 5 inch deep rough around the bunker presents a greater risk to the player...

[Jason Thurman]

Phil, those bunkers were not in play for anyone in the US Open. The first was something like a 150 carry to clear. The second was at around the 400 yard mark.

If we accept that the US Open was never going to have a 50 yard fairway, then it's far better in my mind to shift it to the right and bring OB and the bunkers further up the hole on the right (in a position where someone might occasionally hit a shot) into play. The bunkers on the left are just ornamental in a professional tournament in 2013.

[Wade Whitehead]

I would expect the scoring on the hole was pretty low. I am not aware of anyone hitting OB.

Kelly:

Did you watch the final round?

WW

[Matthew Petersen]

As I recall most of the bunkers if not all were not floating; the fairway went right to the edge of the sand in some instances and was close in other instances.

I would expect the scoring on the hole was pretty low. I am not aware of anyone hitting OB.

May have been more interesting to move the fairway in both directions, left and right. Given that hole 3 tee is near by, you have to plan the movement in the fairway to work around some safety issues but the general point is instead of making a linear fairway have it more circuitous but I have not examined exactly how that might work. Pushing it against the road made it a one dimensional hole, not a lot of thought had to go into playing different options.

Scoring average for the week was over par (5.0416). This on a hole reachable in two for much of the field. There were 21 doubles or worse.

In the final round alone, Tiger hit his first drive OB. Stricker did as well before flat out shanking his 4 shot from the rough.

[Mark Bourgeois]

Here are two ideas:

1) Call 2 a par 4 and 5 a par 5. Widen the playing corridors on 2 and sometimes play from the member tees -- that makes the far bunker 308 to reach and 330 to carry. All this keeps the magic number at 70 and cuts down the bitching about both holes. Win win.

OR:

2) Widen 2 fairway and play the hole from 5's back tee. For more championship madness have the floggers play 5 from the back tee on 2.

Actually, create one big fairway between 2 and 5 playing corridors and let the drives fall where they may. This might work if the USGA would get strict on pace of play -- yeah okay, so maybe this is a dream but remember the first rule of brainstorming is not to immediately judge or criticize ideas lest the wellspring of creativity be capped.

[Jason Thurman]

So you want to make objective measurements like mean, median, and mode subjective now? For what purpose?

If you want to throw out Tiger's score, I want to throw out Gary Woodland's. His eagle in the third round wasn't indicative of how the hole played for everyone else. In fact, I think Justin Rose was the only player who was mentally prepared for the final round, so his 5 is the only score that should count toward the average.

Or we could just let averages work the way that they always work, and count on regression toward the mean to balance out the inevitable outliers. It pretty much always does. The only problem with that is it disproves your original thesis that the hole was playing easy despite its narrow fairway. It's scary to imagine imagine what "facts" we would all accept if every scientist in history just disregarded the data that disproved his original hypothesis.

[John Kirk]

No.

It looks wrong in its present form.  I've been lucky enough to have played there, back in 2004 or 2005.  The 2nd hole was beautiful, with about ten to fifteen yards of rough between the fairway and Ardmore Avenue.  The tee shot was still nerve wracking.

I don't care as much as others about the fairway bunkers and fairway touching one another, at least not as a mechanical way to evaluate the hole.  I can't think of a better way to describe it than "it was beautiful before, and now it looks stupid."  You don't frame a picture with the main subject extending all the way to the edge; you leave an attractive border. 

[Matthew Petersen]

Scoring average for the week was over par (5.0416). This on a hole reachable in two for much of the field. There were 21 doubles or worse.

In the final round alone, Tiger hit his first drive OB. Stricker did as well before flat out shanking his 4 shot from the rough.

I believe scoring average in a tournament like this one is too simple and not an accurate representation of the difficulty of a hole, at least not in every instance. Tiger hitting OB and making a big number on Sunday is very different than if he did it on Thursday. I suggest by Sunday he had checked out and the mind set for playing that hole skews the actual difficulty of the hole. On the other hand, Stricker hitting OB is significant. I think by Sunday the only hole average that is meaningful should come from the scores made by the players in contention. The hole averages for Thursday should include a broader field but I wonder if there should be some discrimination in terms of whose score should be included.

I kind of agree with Jason that this is a misguided attitude, but in this case the numbers actually back it up. Here are the scores on #2 on Sunday, from those in contention (final 7 groups):

Colsaerts 5
Poulter 5
Stenson 4
Fernandez-Castano 5
Kim 5
Fowler 6
Day 5
Horschel 6
Donald 5
Rose 5
Stricker 8
Schwartzel 5
Mickelson 5
Mahan 5

14 players made 10 pars, 1 birdie, 2 bogeys, and a triple. That's a 5.286 average. So the hole was more difficult for those in contention on Sunday than it played even for the week. And that's not all Stricker. While he had an outlier score, you still have just one birdie against two bogeys, which is a (slightly) worse stroke average than the hole carried for the week.

[jeffwarne]

Even the greatest golfers in the world fear OB. It influences their thinking and their choice of shots in a way that a bunker will not, whether surrounded by short grass or long.

OK, so let's say that a certain pro fears o.b. enough to aim 25 yards away from it, no matter what.  So now they have to aim at the left edge of the 2nd fairway and hope for the best, instead of aiming down the middle of the fairway as it was before it was moved.  Is that really a great set-up?

+1

There are a few holes at Merion where OB plays an integral part of the strategy of the hole. 15 of course stands out, and its angles make the OB work as a hazard in my opinion.
(of course cutting the tops off the traditional wooden pilings and then putting a fence 4 feet past was one of the odder things I'ver seen in golf "setup"-to say nothing of the SHEER WASTE of such an action....but I digress)
A few others such as #7 have it pretty tight with no fairway left which impacted "strategy" by most players simply hitting a shorter club to find the fairway and not bothering to challenge with a longer club. Not bad, just pretty common and something a lot of courses face.
These are features members face to some degree  every day at Merion, and are part of the charm, architecture, logistics, and history of the place.

I thought #2 preOpen would've been the perfect compliment to #4, being reachable with the further left one drove the worse the angle in, and  a slight chance of an errant shot going OB. Somebody at the USGA just coudn't stomach a potential "easierish"par 5, despite the fact that there was already a difficult unreachable one ahead, unless they messed with that setup as well (which they did making it the ordinary one on day 4)

In short, Merion has a few holes hugging OB due to its history, geography and intimacy that seeem to work very well.
Just not sure it needed another one.

[Josh Tarble]

I thought it looked dumb but played well...if you wanted a ridiculously hard par 5.

I actually think we may have seen more balls out of bounds if the fairway would have been a touch wider.  I think more players may have taken a swing with driver.  I would have liked to see it and I can't imagine it would have played significantly easier.

[Sinclair Eaddy]

I like many GCA members attended the Open. I've played Merion before and never thought #2 was that severe of a hole. Watching and walking along the hole during the tounament, I came to the conclusion that it was unfair to have the OB that close given the narrow width of the fairway. Maybe one of narrowest landing areas on a par 5 anywhere. I don't think television conveys just how narrow that area really is. Excluding Steve Stricker's bad swing, the layup and approach proved to be extremely challenging as well.

[JESII]

I've played Merion something like 25 - 30 times dating back about 20 years. The second fairway has always been right against the road. Perhaps they found a couple yards, but nothing material.  The left side is what changed. The road defines the hole.

[John Kirk]

That's interesting, Jim.  I could've sworn there was 8-10 yards from the road to the fairway.  Thanks.

[John Kirk]

Here's a nice 2008 photo.  I think we can split the difference, and say the fairway is about 5 yards from the road.

[JESII]

Was the right side much different than this picture last week?

I think it would have blown the golf worlds mind if they had mown a big wide fairway from Ardmore Avenue to the creek...

[Patrick_Mucci]

...improved by moving the fairway up against the road to bring out of bounds into play? 

I'd be interested in opinions of why or why not this made the hole "better".

If you'll look at aerials from the 1940's and 1950's you'll see that the hole was hard against Ardmore Ave.

The USGA just returned the right flank to its earlier position.

Ditton # 14 and # 15.

TS

[Patrick_Mucci]

I've played Merion something like 25 - 30 times dating back about 20 years. The second fairway has always been right against the road. Perhaps they found a couple yards, but nothing material.  The left side is what changed. The road defines the hole.

Agreed