U.S. Open course setup

Mike Davis, the USGA’s course setup guy, gave a lengthy description of how Oakmont will be setup for June’s U.S. Open at the media day on Monday.

Some of the highlights.

But this year we’re at 7,230 yards on the scorecard. Now that is a par-70. That is, I would say, medium-length as U.S. Opens go. It won’t be a long golf course, but it certainly won’t be a short one either. Next year’s Open at Torrey Pines will be just shy of 7,600 yards par-70, and in 2013 when we go across the state to the Eastern part of the state to Merion, we’ll be at 6,900 yards, par-70.

Something tells me that by 2013, Merion will be longer than 6,900 yards. I know Merion has no room currently to expand – but I don’t see the USGA not at 7,000 yards in 6 years time. Given their unwillingness to control technology – beyond a meaningless grove change – 6,900 yards I don’t see in the cards.

And, in fact, this year, I have to really do some research, if you go back, ladies and gentlemen, we’ve got three holes this year, par 4s, that are actually going to be drivable. And if you think about that, that is just great stuff. Last year we had — inaudible — at the 6th hole, which is a drivable par 4, and ended up being truly one of the most exciting things on the course.

And the 17th hole here is another par 4 that’s drivable. But you go back and you look at last year’s U.S. Open Sunday at Winged Foot, we purposely saved the hole location that we felt was most drivable; in other words, to really entice the players to go for it on Sunday. And if you look back at the statistics — inaudible — and if you look at the previous three days, you know, the spread wasn’t near as wide.

So here we have three drivable par 4s, the second hole, the 14th hole and the 17th hole, which will they be drivable every day? No. But will the USGA try to make them drivable by shifting tee markers a little bit or moving hole locations? Absolutely. We think it’s just great drama.

Couldn’t agree more – drivable par 4s are great in tournament golf. (In particular in match play – but having the potential for three drivable par 4s is going to be interesting.)

But Oakmont is a very hilly course and that moves into something that’s very unique about Oakmont that we simply do not see at other U.S. Open courses is that there are a fair number of blind or semi-blind shots out there. And we happen to think that that’s a wonderful attribute to the course where you’re standing on the tee and you can’t see the drive zone. Take the third hole when you get out there, if you hit it basically in the right half of that fairway, and you’ve got a center hole location or right, you can’t even see the flagstick. That just introduces — inaudible — challenges the players.

Blind shots are a good thing at the U.S. Open – it means that there is stratedgy involved. It’s NOT “all right in front of you” as we hear so many of the pros say.

…I think from a U.S. Open standpoint we always try to get the greens relatively fast because we think that brings out other elements that the players have to have from a skill level. The greens are something, these are legendary, and from a lot of aspects it will be an exciting Open, but the greens will be especially exciting. The players see fast greens on a normal basis, but they don’t see greens like this, so it should be great fun.

Let’s just hope it isn’t as fast and fun as 2004.

As far as a couple specifics on the setup, it was mentioned already, and I think everybody is perhaps even tired of hearing about it are the trees here at Oakmont and what’s happened with them.

Actually, sing the tree removal praises from the rooftops – and keep doing it. Maybe they’ll hear it down in Augusta.

As far as preparation — inaudible — the greens will be 13, 13-and-a-half-foot range on the Stimpmeter. As far as just giving a comparison, that would be on the fast side. But we’ve had greens that are faster even up in the 14 range, but I will tell you that we’ve never had greens scarier. And how you come up with that, we really analyze each one of the greens for what — we go out and try to find four hole locations where we’re going to be and that really sets a basis for that number. So we feel it’s 13 to 13 1/2, and are scary fast, Oakmont fast.
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The fairways are pretty wide range in terms of width this year. 22 yards up to 50 yards believe it or not and even though we did move things a little bit out there, I will tell you that the width of this golf course, much more so than other U.S. Open setups really was dictated by the architecture, the slope in the fairways, where the bunkers were placed and so on.
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Bunker preparation, something that we’ve been asked a lot of questions on, again, like we’ve done the last couple of years, welcome in and have the ground staff purposely soften the bunker sand a little bit. What that does is it just makes the challenge a little bit more. If you can give these Tour players — they can hit the ball so well and spin it — inaudible — get in particular the green-side bunker, is not nearly the challenge of being in the rough. We will soften them up — inaudible — we’ve been asked a question, what about furrowing the bunkers because we know what happened last year at the Memorial.
We talked about it and we didn’t feel that was right for the U.S. Open even though Opens past were like that, partially because No. 1 it’s not the same kind of sand it used to be. The original sand in these bunkers was river bottom sand and it was a rocky substance and you could do that. If you tried to do it with this sand I don’t think it would work very well. Candidly, we’re not real crazy about the idea of two guys being in the bunker and one guy, being up top and one guy having an easy shot and the other guy having a near impossible shot.

Candidly, if a player hits a ball in the bunker, they should have no expectation of the next shot being “fair”. You go in a bunker, you may or may not pay a price. He mentions that they’ve “softened” the sand, meaning some players are going to end up with “fried eggs” and some won’t. I don’t see how this is any different that furrowing. And, candidly, I fail to see how this is any different than the rough – some guys are going to end up with good lies in the rough with the ball sitting up and some will end up with a “near impossible shot” with the ball sitting well down.

To finish up things, the 8th hole, the long par 3, I guess the first question to answer is what the heck was the USGA thinking when they put a tee back to 288 yards. To give you a little background, that hole is played 252 yards for every single U.S. Open played here. Folks, back in the 1927 Open it was 252 yards. It was built and designed for drivers, 3-woods. When you get out and play it, you’ll understand it. It’s one of Oakmont’s largest greens, it’s one of the flattest greens and has roughly 40 yards in front of the green at fairway height and slopes slightly downhill. So if you just get it over the cross-bunker, it will feed on to the green unless it’s really wet and again that’s the way the hole was designed.

Again the USGA, when we were here for 2003 and we started watching players in the Amateur routinely hit 2-irons, 4-irons, 5-irons, a few of us shook our heads and said, this doesn’t need to be done for the Open. We thought this distance would really put, you know, 1-irons, 3-woods, even drivers back in the players hands.

No, nothing to see here with the golf ball. Move along…