118th US Open Walking Thread, presented by Johnnie Walker

This was bang on.

2018 U.S. Open: Things I like/don't like

The USGA's setup issue at Shinnecock stems from a much larger problem. It's become nearly impossible to test the world's best players because of technology. It's the runaway train that is transforming golf from a game of skill, thought and execution into one that's strictly execution-based. It's not limited to low-spin, high-launch solid core balls. It includes the 460 cc driver heads that make it virtually impossible to miss. The driving irons and hybrids that effortlessly launch balls high enough to hit to tucked flags. Green reading was an art until books that tell players every slope and contour on the putting surface came along. TrackMan ties it all together, allowing players to optimize every piece of their swing. Today's players are talented and better than ever - not because of skill but because of their tools. These innovations have actually diminished the skills that the world's best players have in their arsenal.

Many of today's prototypical Tour pros appeared clueless at Shinnecock thanks to changing winds, uneven lies and vexing green complexes. The idea of flighting a 4-iron into a modest wind from 180 to control the spin as opposed to bashing a 7-iron is a foreign concept. Rather than use the ground around the greens, many immediately grabbed their 60 degree and watched helplessly as chip shots rolled back to their feet. Shinnecock Hills asked a slew of questions to the world's best players that they had never seen.

Most failed, and it's not their fault. Their week-in and week-out setups on the PGA Tour don't ask these difficult questions. To succeed on the PGA Tour, they don't need these shots, so why learn how to hit them? These are the skills that the great players of yesterday had in spades. Skills they learned because they didn't have solid core golf balls, massive driver heads and books that told them every slope on perfectly manicured greens.

The technology effect has been two-fold. It's made it nearly impossible for the USGA to properly set up a golf course, and it has also robbed the game of skill. Combine the two together, and the line of a good setup and bad setup is razor thin. The vast majority of players lacked the ability to hit the shots that were needed at Shinnecock, and their first reaction was to complain.

 

Tiger confessed too, and was also defiant, you've just always been unwilling to accept this. He didn't willingly cheat, but he forgot the rule, signed his scorecard, was confronted about it, and got to keep playing via Fred Ridley's mental gymnastics. He should have DQ'd himself.

 

So do unfamous alums...thus the Tiger in my name.

 

Some of it was spot-on. Yeah, the equipment is better. So are nutrition, fitness, instruction and many things that give players an edge. All for hitting balls farther, which today's guys would do with or without better gear.
Golf, though, is and will always be about the short shots. The greats of yesteryear putted on greens that rolled 9 or 10 on the Stimpmeter (or would have, had it been put into play yet), where today they are at 12 or 13 and increase as bald, domed greens dry out over the course of a round. Tough to hold greens when that's the case. Tough to be an aggressive putter when one that's hit two revolutions too hard winds up 40 yards back down the fairway.
The greats of yesteryear didn't deal with that. It's always amusing to watch videos of Arnie and Jack putting. It looks like they're playing croquet, as hard as they slam the ball. The balls rocket off the club face, then die after a bit and come to screeching halts. Either that or every putt was uphill.

 

@Fredrick approves your message.

 

PGA Tour courses might be hard, but the execution they ask of players is always very similar. Hit a drive far. Hit an iron shot high. Stop it fast. If you miss the green, it gets caught up in the thick rough. Take a high-lofted wedge from thick grass and hit it close.

Shinnecock was asking something different of them. Hit it to a particular side of the fairway. Hit into a green where going at the flag might be a very bad play because there is no way it will hold if it spins in the wind. If it misses the green, it rolls not just two feet off the green into the rough, but rolls 30 yards away to the bottom of the hill. I was standing 30 feet from Spieth when he made his triple on Thursday. He hit a bunker shot that was almost perfect, but it rolled down shaved hill (what Andy is describing as un-pinable green surface) and left him with a brutal ship up the hill. Instead of two feet off the green, he was 30 yards away. It's a similar story to what happened with Tiger on the first hole. He tried to hit a flop shot of hard pan from behind the green and it led to making a seven. If either of them play those shots around the green more like this was a British Open, they might have made the cut. I will forever remember being next to Adam Scott at St. Andrews in 2015 and watching flight a 4-iron down, into the wind, to get on the green at the Road Hole from 165 yards. It was artistry. That's a shot they just don't use on the PGA Tour, they only think about hitting it when they go overseas, so that's when they start practicing it. If you want to understand why Rory McIlroy is, despite being from Northern Ireland, the epitome of American-style golf, just look at how badly he struggles with wind. He doesn't have different trajectories and 3/4 shots he is comfortable with when the wind kicks up and greens are firm. He just launches the ball higher and higher into the sky, which is one of the reasons he struggles so much with short irons.

The PGA Tour courses are often "hard" but they don't require a lot of "thought" just superior execution.

 

I will be interested to see what happens at TPC Sawgrass when the Players is in March and Ponte Vedra Beach can be quite windy and even approaching chilly some days. That's pretty close to the ideal of the course that of course is difficult, but is all about execution. Hit your number. I hate that phrase, not only because I can't do it, but because it makes the damn game sound like archery.

 

How great is it at the British Open when guys know they have to land the ball short and let it run (sometimes 30-40 yards) or use slopes to get it close?

 

+1

With a rotation of America's greatest and most famous courses, the U.S. Open ought to be a showcase. Instead, the USGA screws it up so badly every year even my wife calls it "funhouse golf." It's like the old adage: the best umpires/referees are the ones you don't notice during the game.

Yes, the world's best professional golfers ought to be smart enough to sacrifice distance for accuracy and improvise different shot trajectories. But the Tour is a bomber's paradise and it's frustrating to see so many strategic blunders committed last week by guys who can't think outside of that box. Again, that's the USGA's fault for letting club and ball manufacturers create technology that allows players to out-muscle courses instead of out-thinking them.

Want to scalp the greens and grow rough the size of a one-story house to present "a true test?" That's all well and good, but a course that's on the edge at 9 a.m. but becomes a skating rink by 3 isn't an equal test for the entire field. I don't want guys in the morning groups to have a huge advantage over the afternoon players just because the USGA's agronomy nerds get their kicks from drying out the course and seeing how far they can push things, especially when they ignore or can't figure out the weather forecast every year.

It was not his fault for taking advantage of the opportunity, but Tommy Fleetwood is a perfect example of what was wrong with the U.S. Open. He shot 75-66-78-63. Want to bet which two rounds he got a major advantage by teeing off in the morning? But the USGA gets their jollies from having no one under par, so expect them to do the same thing to poor Pebble Beach.

The Open and PGA are much better tournaments, because the sanctioning bodies know nobody wants to see them micromanage the event. The USGA is C.B. Bucknor.

 

I dig the R&A. They tell you what course you're playing. No tricking it up. At all.
If you have 4 days of sun, no wind, and someone shoots -23 to win, congratulations.
If you have 4 days of wind and rain, and someone shoots +4 to win, also congratulations.