The post GOLF’s Subpar: Cole Hammer on what it was like playing the U.S. Open at 15-years-old appeared first on Golf.

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The post ‘All hands on deck’: How The Country Club is messing with players’ minds appeared first on Golf.

The post ‘All hands on deck’: How The Country Club is messing with players’ minds appeared first on Golf.

“People hate confidence,” he said after his second round 67. “That’s why people aren’t a big fan of me.”

But even still, there’s one thing that has him rattled this week. It’s not the hefty rough, the slopey greens, or even the awkward tee shots. Rather, it’s the fairways. This week, the short stuff is a little too short, and the prospect of playing from it has been wrecking havoc on Koepka’s iron game.

“It has a little bit of it has to do with the tighter lies in the fairway,” Koepka says. “You see some of these guys fat it from the fairway just because you’ve got to hit it so perfectly. I did it once yesterday, and today I think I was being a little extra cautious to make sure I lean on it.”

Such is the emotional warfare the U.S. Open wages on players. And it was a beautiful, brutal full display on Friday.

Ordinarily, the USGA will quicken the greens on the eve of the tournament to set the tone for the week, but multiple coaches told me that didn’t happen this year. It was a welcome, if unexpected, surprise. Turns out tournament officials were anticipating a bout of rain forecasted for Friday. They got heavy wind instead, and players were left to navigate the guesswork all day.

“Three of my four bogeys were all three-putts, so that kind of sums up the day,” says Matt Fitzpatrick, who spends his non-U.S. Open weeks ranked 22nd on Tour in SG: Putting. He shot an even-par round of 70. “I don’t know what it was. I just couldn’t really see anything going in.”

It’s the kind of mind games that become synonymous with the U.S. Open. Ordinarily on Tour, players rarely have the luxury of not chasing birdies, Seamus Power, who comes into the weekend one over, says. A wayward drive calls for a more-aggressive recovery shot. This week, players are ushered into a humble new reality.

“Here when you miss a green it’s all hands on deck. Even if you’re only 30 feet off the green, it’s hard accepting the best you can do is a 30-foot par putt,” Power says. “Because if you don’t, you could end up with a double bogey or worse.”

Sam Burns, whose three-under 67 was one of the low rounds of the day, agrees.

“If I hit it in a certain spot, I know there’s going to be a lot of bogeys made on this hole,” he says. “I may just lay it up in the fairway and be happy to give myself a look for par.”

It’s not often that players find themselves having to fight their instincts. But that was the task at The Country Club on Friday. High rough, tight fairways, firm greens and whipping wind, all around a course so Americana it’s not just synonymous with the U.S. Open, but one that embodies its very essence.

For a golf fan, it was a delight to watch. The kind of day that will that will live long in the memory. It may well for pros, too. Although when it does, it’ll be for different reasons.

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The post This wickedly fun hole could be the U.S. Open’s most entertaining tee shot appeared first on Golf.

The post This wickedly fun hole could be the U.S. Open’s most entertaining tee shot appeared first on Golf.

The 11th doesn’t possess the Redan’s quintessential towering, angled green, nor its peppering of bunkers. The putting surface is missing a gentle, front-to-back slope. And please, don’t try to convince the good people of North Berwick — owners of the game’s very first Redan — that this tee shot is “blind.”

Rather, the par-3 11th hole at TCC is a short, downhill chute, a 130-yard flipped wedge from an elevated tee box into a deceptively tight green. Its closest sibling might not be the 15th at North Berwick but rather the famed oceanside 7th at Pebble Beach.

“It’s a target that looks big but plays small,” says Gil Hanse, who led the restoration of the 11th ahead of this year’s U.S. Open. “You’ll have a short iron in your hands, but there are some hole locations you have to play away from.”

*As written in the above image*

In the heights: “The elevated nature of the tee shot—because the ball is in the air for so long and it’s got more time to curve—means that misses left or right or short or long are going to be exaggerated,” says Hanse.

Beach retreat: “What the bunkering does here is say, ‘This hole is an aerial test.’ You’ve got to fly it to the green because playing from these bunkers, across that narrow green, is not going to be an easy shot.”

Size matters: “Over time, the green had shrunk” — as noted by the dotted line — “and the primary change we made was restoring it to its original scale, which then introduced significantly different hole locations, including close to the edge on the righthand side.”

No fly zone: “Missing here [right of the green] is a no-go. It’s wet, ruffled, thick. You never know what you’re gonna get.”

The bounce house: “If you hit the edges of the elevated green, it will actually repel your ball.”

***

The last time U.S. Open competitors tussled with No. 11 was in 1913, when the national championship was won by a man with a funny name, Francis Ouimet. The hole was deemed too short for play in the ’63 and ’88 Opens, but it never lost its luster, says Hanse:

“The idea pretty much was, instead of walking past this really cool golf hole, let’s get them to play it.”

After Hanse’s overhaul of the hole — which includes a major expansion of its green — the USGA formally returned it to the championship routing in late 2021.

“It’s night and day,” Hanse says. “It had been set up where all the hole locations were in the middle of the green. Now you’ve got one in front, just over the bunker, you’ve got one falling off front right — you’ve got all these options.”

Tournaments

Playing anywhere from 105 to 142 yards in length, it will be the shortest hole on the course. But will it be too short? Hanse doesn’t think so.

“There’ll be enough defense to the hole,” he says. “The length may lead the pros to hit shots or take chances that they might be less willing to take on other golf holes. From a golf architecture standpoint, there’s a nice mental challenge. Here’s a tough target to hit. Let’s see how aggressive you want to be on it.”

The 11th is a peculiar hole with a peculiar name. But as Ouimet knows all too well, at The Country Club it’s not about what you’re called — just how you’re remembered.

The post This wickedly fun hole could be the U.S. Open’s most entertaining tee shot appeared first on Golf.

The post After Francis Ouimet, Brookline gave us another key piece of golf lore appeared first on Golf.

The post After Francis Ouimet, Brookline gave us another key piece of golf lore appeared first on Golf.

It was then, in the early 1930s, that Ouimet found himself teamed with Ted Ray — his 1913 U.S. Open sparring partner — in a four-ball match. His opponent? A Harvard-educated banker (and fellow member at The Country Club) by the name of Edward Stimpson.

Stimpson was a burgeoning amateur himself, a tough-as-nails competitor who had earned a reputation as one of the best players in the state. Though neither player knew it, their match would serve as a launching off point for the banker’s starring role in golf history.

Years later, in ’35, Stimpson was a spectator at Oakmont for Sam Park Jr.’s controversial U.S. Open win. He saw from up close how Park Jr. — a Pittsburgh club pro who’d played the course daily in the lead-up to the Open — used his knowledge of green speeds to earn a considerable advantage over the remainder of the field.

Less than a year after Park Jr.’s win, Stimpson unveiled the solution: a yardstick with a groove chiseled down the center. He called it the “Stimpmeter,” and said it would provide a foolproof method of calculating green speeds across every course in the world.

To get a “reading,” a person would hold the yardstick at 20 degrees and roll the ball down the center groove. Then, that person would measure the distance the ball traveled until reaching a stop. The goal was to take six such readings from various points on the putting surface.

If the average of the six measurements was 10 feet, the “Stimp reading” for the hole was a 10, and so on.

At this June’s U.S. Open, the Stimpmeter will once again take center stage at the toughest test in golf. In Brookline, Stimpson’s old home club will rely heavily upon his creation to ensure consistency on the greens throughout tournament week.

Nearly a century later, the legend of Edward Stimpson lives on in every maintenance shed of every course around the world. The details of his match with Ouimet, however, do not. Stimpson won, but the rest remains a mystery — a footprint in the sands of time.

How big is that footprint? At The Country Club, it rolls close to a 12.

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The post Drop Zone: U.S. Open conditions will be extremely difficult. Here’s why that’s a good thing. appeared first on Golf.

The post Drop Zone: U.S. Open conditions will be extremely difficult. Here’s why that’s a good thing. appeared first on Golf.

The post Drop Zone: U.S. Open conditions will be extremely difficult. Here’s why that’s a good thing. appeared first on Golf.

The post Can an average golfer advance the ball out of U.S. Open-grade rough? We found out appeared first on Golf.

The post Can an average golfer advance the ball out of U.S. Open-grade rough? We found out appeared first on Golf.

GOLF’s Darren Riehl and Jeff Hall, the USGA senior director of U.S. Open Championships, break down the heavy stuff at TCC — and attempt hitting out of it.

The post Can an average golfer advance the ball out of U.S. Open-grade rough? We found out appeared first on Golf.

The post How to play The Country Club: The 2022 U.S. Open site, explained appeared first on Golf.

The post How to play The Country Club: The 2022 U.S. Open site, explained appeared first on Golf.

The post How to play The Country Club: The 2022 U.S. Open site, explained appeared first on Golf.

The post How to U.S. Open-ize a golf course: A day with The Country Club’s grounds crew appeared first on Golf.

The post How to U.S. Open-ize a golf course: A day with The Country Club’s grounds crew appeared first on Golf.

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The post At Brookline, golf faces an all-time debate. Distance? Or design? appeared first on Golf.

The post At Brookline, golf faces an all-time debate. Distance? Or design? appeared first on Golf.

But this year, there was nary an eagle on the 15th hole at Augusta National. In 2014, Pinehurst No. 2 — with no rough and the widest fairways on a Golden Age course in the modern history of the U.S. Open — clobbered everyone but winner Martin Kaymer.

What’s a golf fan to think? Times they are a-changing, yet many of us are still drawn to the thrill of the sport’s traditions. Each season, every one of the four majors has a role to play, and it would be a tragedy if, through the increasingly routine course tweaks now being made to “test” today’s Tour pros, they morphed into similar events.

Well, the site for this year’s U.S. Open — The Country Club, in Brookline, Mass. — will definitely be doing its part, reminding us how U.S. Open courses have historically been presented.

Eighteen holes already existed here prior to the advent of the game-changing rubber-wound-core Haskell ball in 1901. Ever since, the only constant at the oldest country club in America has been change, with more than 10 architects having worked on the course in its 129- year existence. And that is very much a part of its charm. This isn’t one architect’s 200th course. The Country Club has, in time, evolved into its own, fantastically inimitable thing, unified masterfully by a Gil Hanse restoration that began in 2007.

Interestingly, the exact configuration of holes for this year’s Open will be used for the first time. The USGA’s new routing — a combination of holes from TCC’s three nines — is compelling, with its artful mix of old-fashioned features and small greens and rough imperiling the sides and back of each putting surface. Players, consider yourselves on notice.

Overall, the greens nestle into their surrounds and are sloped either back-to-front or side-to-side. They’re tiny too.

Among current U.S. Open sites, only Pebble Beach features smaller targets. No doubt that some pros will jawbone about them, but Hanse has actually expanded the greens in size by 20 percent since the course hosted the Ryder Cup — the heated “Battle of Brookline” — in 1999.

Then there’s the wind. At the 1963 Open, it blew sufficiently to where, after 72 holes, the tournament’s three leaders sat at +9! (Julius Boros eventually won the playoff.) But wind isn’t essential for The Country Club to be a rigorous test. Under any scenario, relentlessly staying in position will be the task. Long over any green is not your friend, and gunning for back hole locations will be folly.

Case in point: The par-3 6th plays to a double plateau green, courtesy of Willie Campbell in 1894, that features a steep falloff left and to the rear. There’s no bunker behind the green to “save” the player from the prototypically nasty U.S. Open rough. Yes, it’s the largest green on the course, and, yes, Tour pros conjure all sorts of amazing up-and-downs most weeks. But this week will reward those with the discipline to resist flag hunting such “sucker” hole locations as front left, behind a yawning bunker, or back right, on the upper plateau. When Nick Faldo and Curtis Strange duked it out in the 1988 U.S. Open, they were masterful in staying below the hole as they tacked around the entire course.

The blend of holes at The Country Club is bewitching. To miss the green on the steeply downhill, 131-yard 11th is to open Pandora’s Box. Even with a 60-degree wedge in hand, draw the wrong lie in the spinach and you risk sliding across the 17-yard-wide green. And if you think that first recovery shot is difficult, try the second one.

How players handle the 310-yard, par-4 5th will be fascinating. It plays uphill to a small green ringed by rough and bunkers. What will the pros, who commonly run roughshod over short two-shotters, do? Will a player be humble enough to hit, say, 6-iron off the tee? One thing he shouldn’t do is chase the perimeter hole locations recovered by Hanse. Miss those and you’ll go from being the hunter to the hunted.

Both the 5th and the par-3 11th will pit technology — and the golfer’s confidence that he can summon pretty much any shot — against small targets that resist aggressive approaches. This showdown of old versus new permeates the design. Think you can hold the 18th green with its fronting-cross bunker while playing out of five-inch-deep rough should you miss the fairway? Let’s hope not.

Some daunting 4½-par holes best highlight the allure of the club’s rugged New England topography, specifically the 3rd and 10th, both 499-yard brutes. Both world-class holes weave past puddingstone ledges and intrusive shoulders from hillsides. Many other holes elbow in one direction or the other. It’s hard to believe players will hit driver on some of them, like the 373-yard, par-4 17th, which bends left, past four bunkers, to a slender and minuscule green. Other fairways feature bunkers 20 to 60 yards short of greens. Think they’re out of play? Miss a fairway and they become a factor, even for the world’s best. (Or brainiest. TCC is home to the Harvard golf team.) Getting up-and-in from 80 yards will be important, even if it isn’t glamorous.

Finally, only two par 5s exist, so no freebies this week! One of them, the 619-yard 14th, is among the hardest par 5s I’ve ever seen. It’s also one of golf ’s best relatively unknown holes, borrowed as it is from the club’s third nine, Primrose. Hitting the fairway is critical to stair stepping 30 feet to the next level of fairway with your second. Otherwise, be prepared for a blind 150-yard approach from the base of a hill to an angled green. Too many par 5s let golfers just slap the ball around. Not here.

The direction course design has taken in the 21st century is to be applauded. Fifty-yard-wide fairways and engaging greens framed by short grass — this provides ample challenge and plenty of fun for the greatest number of players. I love what it brings to the game. But for this one week, that won’t be the brand of golf on display.

I, for one, will be absolutely thrilled to see course discipline take center stage once again. The Country Club is a strict old schoolmaster, and few will get a passing grade at the 2022 U.S. Open. But reflecting back, the sport’s best may just become better, smarter golfers for the experience.

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The post Headed to the U.S. Open? Join the GOLF team at the best party in town appeared first on Golf.

The post Headed to the U.S. Open? Join the GOLF team at the best party in town appeared first on Golf.

For U.S. Open attendees and area golf fans, it promises to be a wicked-good time. 

On the heels of similar events in Augusta during Masters week and in Tulsa, Okla., during the PGA Championship, GOLF’s best and brightest personalities will convene at Baramor Newton — just a 10-minute drive from the U.S. Open venue, The Country Club — on June 14-15 to produce a series of live U.S. Open-themed shows.

The two-day event, which is open to the public from 4 p.m. to 10 p.m. each day at no cost, will be the best spot in town for fans to glean U.S. Open insights and other color from our crew of experts. Also on offer: more than $2,500 in giveaways, the chance to hit TaylorMade’s latest gear on a simulator and a Dewar’s golf-cart happy hour.   

On Tuesday, June 14, the live recordings (scroll down for times) will include episodes of Drop Zone, hosted by GOLF’s Dylan Dethier, and Fully Equipped, hosted by GOLF’s equipment whiz Jonathan Wall. Wall also will host a special edition of ClubTest Live, in which he’ll explain the tech behind TaylorMade’s latest drivers, wedges and balls.

On Wednesday, June 15, two more of GOLF’s most popular shows will take the stage: Subpar, hosted by Colt Knost and Drew Stoltz, and Off Course with Claude Harmon. 

Before and after their shows, all hosts will be available to meet and greet attendees. 

Now…about that free stuff! Over the course of the two days, we’ll be giving away a bounty of amazing prizes, including a TaylorMade Stealth driver, a TaylorMade MG3 wedge, a year’s supply of TaylorMade TP5/TP5X Pix balls, “Birdie Juice” Rokform speakers and a $500 Radmor gift card.

We can’t guarantee you’ll win any loot, but we can guarantee you’ll go home a smarter, more informed golf fan. 

See you next week!

Here’s the full schedule:  

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