Rickie Fowler’s blistering -7 65 to set the pace for the 2017 U.S. Open’s opening round was the talk around the grounds, along with Jason Day’s struggles on the other side of the ledger. Day came in with a 79.
The leaderboard is instructive, though, as to the setup at Erin Hills this year. Whenever players criticize a U.S. Open setup, their argument of choice is almost always that they don’t mind a difficult test, but they want it to be fair. Players want good shots to be rewarded, not punished due to, say, a green that isn’t receptive to even the highest and softest of approaches.
It’s a cliche at this point, but it’s not a concept without merit. The USGA agrees with it, in principle, and the differences between the two sides lie in their own definitions of fairness. Players want to be able to birdie every hole, because that’s what their job is. The USGA sees par as a fair result. Erin Hills seems like a compromise course, and hopefully it yields some great weekend drama.
Some of that drama is likely to occur on one of my favorite holes here. I walked the back nine in reverse in the afternoon, and it’s quite a slog; the fifteenth green is about as far from the clubhouse/media center area as you can get. It’s a literal turning point for the property as from there, play returns back towards the clubhouse. But it could just as easily be a turning point in the competition this weekend.
The 15th is absurd in person, in the best ways. A shortish par 4, the tee boxes are at the top of one hill, and players hit down into the fairway valley before heading back up another hill to the dramatically elevated green.
The fairway is bunkered throughout, meaning that even modest layups have to be well placed. It reminded me of one of those labyrinthe games where you have to negotiate a marble through a maze while avoiding holes.
But laying back short of the fairway bunkers means a much longer approach, while successfully taking them on leaves you with more of a blind approach to an undulating green.
On Thursday, I watched Paul Casey lay up and still make birdie, while Henrik Stenson, Sergio Garcia, and Adam Scott went over the fairway bunkers and got up and down for their birdies as well. (I also saw Bubba Watson drive it into the fescue on the right, have his caddy Ted walk all the way to the center of the green to get an exact yardage, and then hit it to the back of the green.)
When Erin Hills hosted the 2011 U.S. Amateur, the USGA moved the tees on #15 way up on Sunday, playing it at 252. They likely wouldn’t go that short this weekend, but I could easily imagine either Saturday or Sunday featuring a forward tee designed to entice players to go for it.
Other notes from the grounds
** As I walked up to Gate 2 to enter Thursday’s opening round of the U.S. Open, I moved to toss a Gatorade bottle into the recycling bin at the edge of the walkway. It was already warm, and I’d finished most of it as I’d crossed the giant field that serves as on-site parking.
Before I could toss the bottle, though, a woman staffing the entrance stopped me, and said that I could actually bring it in with me and refill it at a hydration station, to avoid paying the concession stand prices. It was a thoughtful gesture, and one I might have taken advantage of were the Gatorade itself not a holdover from my Wednesday stay in the media center, which offers plenty of bottled beverages for free to us coddled media types.
I didn’t want to explain that, though, because it would have been self-important. Instead, I simply declined her generosity and threw the bottle away right in front of her, refusing to meet her eyes as I assumed they’d be filled with disapproval.
Turns out I made the right call, though:
Evidence of E. coli bacteria has been found in a hydration station at Erin Hills golf course, site of the U.S. Open, health officials said Thursday.
The Washington Ozaukee Health Department on Thursday identified the bacteria in a drinking water sample collected from the hydration station connected to a well near the 12th hole, according to a news release from the department.
I actually walked right by that station on Thursday afternoon, and was indeed almost run over by a cart driven by two young volunteers tasked with hauling the empty 5-gallon water jugs they’d obviously been using to replace the potentially-infested waters. I hadn’t paid attention to the stations on Wednesday, and when I saw them on Thursday they had all switched to the office water cooler setup, which honestly makes a lot more sense.
It seems unlikely that anyone would be sickened by it, but it’s an unfortunate headline for the USGA, which also had to deal with the crash of an advertising blimp unaffiliated with the event:
Hopefully the pilot makes a full recovery. The most astounding thing about the incident, perhaps, was that the company behind the blimp, AirSign, actually retweeted this, and it’s still on their feed:
https://twitter.com/gentles021/status/875371846362947584
Thanks to everyone for your concerns, the blimp pilot is being taken to the hospital but is expected to be ok. No details on cause of crash
— AirSign Airship Group (@AirSign) June 15, 2017
That’s not good.
** I’m reminded that golf fans from all over likely aren’t traveling to Wisconsin this week to make up the bulk of the crowd. Rather, it’s more likely to be locals who have been hearing about the event since Erin Hills was awarded the tournament back in 2010.
The reminder was provided by two gentlemen who sidled up behind me on the ropes behind the 17th green and proceeded to have a loud debate about what the asterisks meant next to player names on the leaderboard (started on the back nine, if you’re curious too.)
As a player lined up a short par putt, a volunteer a few feet away raised her arms to signal quiet, and one said to the other “She’s waving at you!”
The player then missed the putt, which elicited a “Ah, he MISSED it!” from one of the guys before they moved on. (They were drinking beer, they had Wisconsin accents, and they were in their 50s. It was perfect.)
While they walked away, the volunteer kind of looked at me and rolled her eyes, softly saying “Some people just don’t get it.”
And that’s fine, to be honest. Come out, enjoy golf, support the sport, and everyone involved is happy. You pay your money, you get your ticket. It was funny, though.
** The merchandise tent is essentially a giant department store, filled with just about anything you could ever want adorned with the Erin Hills logo. It was packed, likely due to the air conditioning that was strong enough to blow my credential around on its lanyard, and volunteers/employees (it’s a difficult distinction to discern) were constantly darting in and out of the crowd to restock shelves with returns or unwanted merchandise.
** There are other fan experiences on site, including a golf simulator that lets you take three swings on a virtual Erin Hills. That one had a fairly long line, as though attendees had walked around this giant, overwhelmingly formidable course and thought to themselves “Yeah, I could do this.”
They cannot do this.
** There’s a Ruth’s Chris concession tent. I did not explore it, but I will try to find out the menu and pricing options, because what you want is Ruth’s Chris food prepared outdoors in the Wisconsin heat with a potentially dangerous water supply.
