Matthew W hit 14% of his fairways and shot -5 to take the lead. Bryson D hit 21% of the fairways on his way to an even par round and 2nd place. How do you predict winning scores when the US Open world has been turned upside down?
and Wolff's 65 Saturday, with 2 fairways hit, is the lowest score ever shot at Winged Foot in an Open(ties JT's Thursday round).
The field is averaging 40% fairways, which is less than 6 per round.
The scale of the elite game is gone, and the winners will become more random.
If drives are going to run 30-70 yards, and travel 380 yards in total everything should be enlarged.
It's not about "protecting par"
If par 4's are 500 yards and the fairways are 24 yards wide, that makes the width less than 5% of the length.
That's just an entirely different game than the Golden Age architcts envisioned and built, and absolutely mitigates the effect of angles, which are now only obtained randomly due to distance the ball travels,turf speeds and narrowed fairways .
Angles ARE often gained on pitch out shots.
Look at any old Golden age photo and the fairways about triple that 5% or nearly 15%(as a percentage of their length on a long par 4)There are many bombers on tour, and occasionally one catches fire with the driver (Rory),
but when the fairways get this hard to hit, it becomes far more random(somebody's gotta win) as they all are in the rough.
Bombing driver(or 3 wood on hook tee shots) is absolutely the best strategy.
Hit it, Go find it.
The deep rough only encourages it as that Gap wedge from 160 is easier than that 3 iron from 240(and infinitely easier than 240 from the rough) , and the odds are about even that either club off the tee will find the fairway, exponentially increasing the odds of a birdie chance for the player hitting driver.Another reason to hit driver is that the bunkers have been "modernized" to occur most often somewhere in the driver landing/rolling zone, which is a far better outcome than 5 inch rough.
Strategy as we know it is dead on classic courses.(not really dead, just different)
Equipment has a lot to do with this, but analytics, conditioning and skill sets do as well.
All that said, I'm enjoying this US Open a lot.
Also, it's great to see interesting greens with lots of slope and tilt, and "arcing putts" as Azinger keeps calling them.
Big difference in speed between uphill, downhill and sidehill putts.
The green design and hole placements are the challenge, not some USGA induced superfast bumpy, stressed plinko.
If these greens had less slope, Wolff would've shot in the 50's yesterday, as he missed multiple putts inside 10 feet(which were tough putts due to green design).