The Aftermath

Two things strike me after watching the open this past week with a critical eye. One has to do with bunker grasses and the other with drainage. I know, it's easy to be a critic........

First, for the most part I thought the set up of the golf course was excellent. The one place I think they got it wrong was with some of the long grasses on the faces and noses of the bunkers. For instance, on the 18th green complex. Sure, it’s a “cool look”, and I have no problem with the fescues growing into the sides and noses of the bunkers when larger fescue rough areas tie into the bunker. In other words when they are adjacent to the hazard. However, they become randomly penal when they are in the middle of normal rough, the fairway, or a green complex. I don’t think you should ever be penalized more for carrying a hazard than in it. Some might argue that the long grasses are “part of the hazard”. The problem is, surrounding the green these grasses can be extremely thick due to irrigation. And at one point in the Open, a player had to hack it from the face of the bunker next to the green, and into the bunker in order to play a shot. Under normal circumstances, (without the aid of ball spotters and fans), the ball would likely have been lost. It doesn’t make sense when the player is “on-line” and just a couple of yards off of the green. My thinking is if the USGA is going to transition the rough from fairway to longer grasses, why wouldn’t they consistently carry out that philosophy throughout the course?



“There’s so much water on the 18th fairway that Michael Phelps couldn’t par it.”
Golf Writer Dan Jenkins

I know they had an awful amount of rain. However, if you have ever seen the 18th hole – it’s easy to identify where the drainage is going to be an issue. Whenever the land has a dramatic drop and then flattens out, you can expect water to collect and sit. Now I know there are many purists out there who think you should never have a catch basin in a fairway. And maybe they refuse to work on sites with clay soils. But when you are planning a course for the US Open Championship and you are given millions of dollars to prepare the course, you would think one would address the landing area of the finishing hole. You do anything you can to get the water off of the prime landing zone. Collect the run-off in the rough and penalize a poor shot. Or, as a last resort, put a catch basin in the fairway if you have to. There is plenty of room at Bethpage to get the water off of landing areas.