Post Time

I'm very much on the clock, so let's have at it...

Mike Bamberger with Unknown Course Du Jour piece:

Tell grandpa he's watching the right channel. Yes, the course is treeless, windswept and hilly, with wide fairways framed by long, bowing fescue rough. But, no, this isn't a rerun

of an old British Open. He's watching the 2017 U.S. Open at Erin Hills, a rugged, 11-year-old inland public course (with a $280 green fee) in Wisconsin's working countryside, 35 miles and a world away from downtown. 

Erin Hills was built on 600 acres of fertile farmland. Its three architects cleared out nearly every tree, got their bulldozer drivers drunk (no, not literally) and created a golfing playground that is vast in every way. (All stretched out, the course can play over 7,800 yards.) This is a verdant ball-in-the-air American course built on heavy brown dirt. Most of the greens are elevated, and the goal is to fly the ball to the hole. At a British Open, players often bounce shots into the green, and they might not hit driver three times in a round. At Erin Hills, guys will hit drivers all day long.

Yada, yada, yada.... Not his fault, but we get it, it's not a links, but rather a course played through the air.  What else you got?

Dustin Johnson, the insanely long defending champion, visited Erin Hills early this month and over a dinner in the fieldstone clubhouse changed the conversation from fast boats and fine wine to tell his table, "This course is big." There was awe in his tone, which was noted by his fellow diners because Dustin Johnson doesn't do awe.

OK, if it seems big to a guy that hits it as far as Dustin, that's big.

So this one is big, in every way. Also, a mystery. Before the Open, Mike Davis, the USGA's executive director, was both being honest and lowering expectations: "From parking to how the course is going to play, there are really a lot of things we just don't know." In the privacy of their practice rounds, players made jokes about the country hikes, mocked the rough that will cost them strokes (and most likely balls) and wondered why the USGA is so damn nasty. It wouldn't be a U.S. Open if the players weren't agitated about something, right? But they were also largely positive about the golf course. "This is nothing like Chambers Bay," Johnson said. "You can't compare them. This is a good course."

 On this subject, Brian Wacker has the most interesting item of the day, under this header:

Why can't they be friends? 

The aftermath of Sunday at Oakmont revived some of the latent tension of tour pros toward the USGA. It also might have helped the two sides begin to find common ground

Have we considered that perhaps they shouldn't be friends?  Serious, there are relationships where built-in tension is a feature, not a bug...  Think of the three branches of our federal governemnet, unless that ruins your day...

The story begins in the Oakmont locker room:

Other players corroborated the story. Said one, “There was a heated feeling in the locker room [among the tour pros] toward the USGA.” 

Fortunately, it never came to that. Johnson won by three strokes. The only frustration he showed was afterward, upon reviewing the infraction with USGA officials, when he argued that his putter couldn’t have possibly caused the ball to move (a position Westwood seconded). Eventually, Johnson said, in rather terse words, that he didn’t care, asking officials instead if he could just have his damn trophy. 

We’ll never really know whether or not any player, much less some of the game’s biggest stars, might have staged what would have amounted to a walk out for this year’s Open. But several players seemingly liked the thought—and perhaps still do—of sending a message to the USGA over what was the latest in a disconcerting series of gaffes from the association: Enough is enough.

You first.  Yes, in the heat of the moment guys will show their frustration, but no one is skipping the Open....

The griping basically splits into two subjects reflecting the functions of the USGA, the presentation of their signature event, including site selection and set-up, and rules-making and the administration of those rules.

On the former, Brian's categorization of F-ups include these two items:

• The hole location atop a crest on the 18th hole at Olympic Club drew the ire of many, 

Watering at Shinnecock, c2004.

most memorably Payne Stewart, during the 1998 U.S. Open, as many players would up with longer second putts if their first attempt didn’t make it up the hill.

• In 2004 at Shinnecock Hills, the course became so dried out by the final round that the grounds crew had to water holes between groups, with the green on the seventh hole becoming nearly unplayable. “It was a great deal embarrassing,” former USGA executive director Frank Hannigan would later say.

Yes, the third item is the greens at Chambers Bay, but talk not moving on...  1998 and 2004?   

By the way, I was at an inter-club match at Fenway yesterday, and they were watering the greens in the afternoon.  I get that in '04 the 7th green was a problem, but the mere act of watering is not....

See, I think this bit is telling:

“We’re spoiled by an organization [the PGA Tour] that does this week in and week out,” said one player whose resume includes wins at USGA-run events while an amateur. “That’s where ego comes in. They are the governing body in the game of golf, so [they think] they must know more than us.”

Thanks, Ryan.....  Just guessing, but he's quoted elsewhere by name....

More importantly, this event is not supposed to remind anyone of Memphis or Fort Worth.  It's easy to blame this on coddled modern players, but whining about U. S. Open set-ups has a rich history in our game.

Jack famously spoke of listening to how players talked early in week, identifying those that took themselves out of contention with their negativity.  In so many ways Mike Davis has made the Open much more interesting, with graduated rough and the like, but very few of the current players have ever heard of Tom Meeks.

And get a load of this:

Players still fume about how at Merion in 2013, they were told to leave the driving range, which was on the venue’s West Course, 30 minutes before their tee time to allow for any potential traffic jams as vans shuttled them over to the East Course.

A necessary accommodation to return to one of golf's historic venues, where Bobby "Friggin'" Jones closed out his Grand Slam, and players, note the plural, are still "fuming".  Entitled much?

Does anyone seriously differ with the concept that the U.S. Open should be the sternest test of golf?  Assuming all parties will stipulate to that, then we're left with a discussion of what that means and how to accomplish it.... But we can also agree that the failure to control distance (yes, that's the USGA's failure for sure), has made this task far more difficult.  And the tools available to them, lightning fast greens and narrow fairways, have consequences we're not enjoying....

On our second category of complaints, I'm far more sympathetic to the players:

“It seems more recently rules have become a huge problem in golf and [the USGA] is in charge of those,” said Adam Scott. “Times have changed in golf with television and high definition. They’re never thinking ahead of what could happen so they have no protocol how to deal with the situation. 

“You can’t be out there not knowing what score you’re at. How do you hit the next shot or make the right decision? … It’s not under control, and it needs to be.” 

Added another major winner: “Their priorities are not the right ones all the time. It might be the right ones for them, but in the big picture of the game of golf and all that goes along with that, they’re looking at [them] with the wrong angles.”

OK, Brian erred in using that last quote, without the obvious follow up to cite examples....  But Adam is spot-on about the passivity in getting ahead on the use of video.  For instance, there are four video review sites on the golf course at Erin Hills, after the farce at Oakmont that require officials to make their way back to the clubhouse.  

To the USGA’s credit, after the DJ rules issue at Oakmont and again shortly after the Thompson affair at the ANA Inspiration, the governing body, along with the R&A, acted more swiftly than is its habit to try to remedy situations in which the rules did seem unfair. Now in place is a local rule that takes away any penalty for the accidental movement of a golf ball. 

“There was a positive result from the DJ situation,” Davis recently said in Golf Digest. “I told my colleagues at the R&A, ‘This rule about the ball moving on the green continues to plague us. It’s burned the tours, and it makes the rules look stupid.’ So we fast-forwarded a rule change, which we wouldn’t have fast-forwarded without what happened at Oakmont.”

Yes, Mike, but you drop-kicked it the first time you changed that rule.   And, if you're under the impression that they've dealt with Lexigate, read this item from Shack.

They need to get better in a hurry....much better.

Lastly, before leaving you to the actual golf, Brad Klein does a deep dive on fescuegate:

Actually, the cutbacks of fescue started more than a week ago, before the players arrived en masse, before the bellyaching from some golfers. The USGA and the Erin Hills

maintenance crew have been pulling back some of the denser, taller fescue to uncover bunkers that had gotten overgrown, opening up more lines of visibility. On the 338-yard, par-4 second, crews removed the tallest fescue from the back of a massive fairway carry bunker. The move created more options for players to try the 280-yard carry and benefit from the downhill slope behind – without the risk of losing a ball that made it over. 

USGA championship agronomist Darin Bevard explained it as he drove by. “We’re doing it for playability, visibility and aesthetics. Not to make the course easier, just to make it the way we wanted it to play before the fescues got so high.”

Then, why would you let it grow so high in the first place?   

Here's some exculpatory information, but only somewhat:

It’s not an easy tangle. The crew regularly cuts and harvests the stuff, shipping it off to local Amish farmers who use it for cattle feed. In a barter exchange, the Amish community handcrafts woodwork accessories for Erin Hills – water coolers, benches and signposts. 

Lately, the fescues have sprouted as if on steroids. A cool, wet spring set the stage, followed by a burst of uncommonly hot temperatures the last two weeks that saw the fescue grow by as much as a foot. The chewings and creeping red fescues in particular got heavy-headed.

 And this from Rex Hoggard:

The USGA has become the game’s most polarizing organization. Some questioned

Tuesday’s nip/tuck as more than simply a “prescribed plan based on weather,” as the association’s spokesman explained. They contend the “trimming” was an attempt to quiet the crowd at an event that desperately needs to avoid another major miscue. 

Whether that’s the case really didn’t matter. Not on Tuesday as news of the cutting was met with a mixture of eye rolls and raised eyebrows. It’s not that players didn’t believe the official statement, but they’ve become conditioned to think the worse when it comes to the USGA.

Whether true or not, the obvious conclusion is that a Kevin Na video caused the USGA to make a significant change in the presentation of the course....  Is that good for anyone?  I mean, anyone besides Kevin Na... 

The good news is that we can now watch some actual golf.  Enjoy!