Excellent article discussing the width and angles. It has a case study of the 10th hole to drive the point home as the hole locations in rounds 1 and 2 were on opposite sides of the green.
http://www.friedegg.co/golf-courses/erin-hills-strategic-design
This is very cool. I'm just not sure I see enough of a pattern in the scattering of tee shots to draw the same conclusions the author seems to draw about whether the width is working the way width is supposed to work (and whether or not the players are using it with intention).
That said, I am a little intrigued by all the yellow and orange dots on the right side of the fairway from Thursday's round. It seems that playing up the "ideal" side might have been more risk than it was worth.
Jeff also makes a good point - if your 60 wide yard fairway is surrounded by major trouble on both sides, doesn't that kind of put us right back in the "aim down the middle" boat?
I've long been told that width challenges the good player with strategic decisions while accommodating the weak player with room to play. But after two days of surprisingly low scores on a 7800 yard course, shouldn't we at least ask ourselves if width comforts the good player, who can hit a good shot from almost any yardage as long as the ball is lying on the fairway, while allowing architects and maintenance teams to justify growing wildly long and thick native areas around each fairway that the not-as-good player will still find regularly enough to require plenty of provisionals and ball searches?
Or maybe Erin Hills just doesn't employ width as effectively as other "wide" modern courses. Or maybe the most elite players just hit the ball way too far. I'm open to discussion. But I think we at least have to ask the question of whether our width dogma is all a bunch of horseshirt.