The U.S. Open starts Thursday at Erin Hills outside Milwaukee. Erin Hills is an interesting course, with a fascinating backstory that includes just about everything, up to and sadly including murder.
Long tipped to host the USGA’s national championship, the course is an architectural exercise in American heartland links golf, which means no trees to speak of, sandy soils, and plenty of fescue grasses, making up both the fairways and in the rough.
It’s that long rough fescue that’s attracting the ire of players, including Kevin Na, who decided to do a bit of practical demonstration and post the result on Instagram:
Now, that’s obviously a dramatic demonstration of what happens if you do find that fescue, and we certainly might see plenty of unplayables taken this week if Na’s findings are representative.
But there’s also this: hit the ball in the damn fairway! They’re large fairways, it’s wide open, and you’re the best players in the world. Players absolutely despise the USGA setups, and sometimes, they have every right to complain. The greens at Chambers Bay in 2015 were not exactly offering true rolls, and there are times where courses can become unfair, if not unplayable. Players don’t want to put up big numbers. This is how they make their living.
But par isn’t a right. Nor is it a right to be able to advance your ball if you hit it into the fescue, just like it wouldn’t be if those fairways were tightly lined with trees. If this can help add some strategic value, while bringing shorter-but-straighter hitters into play, then it’s fine. Someone will go low at some point, and it seems highly unlikely that anyone is going to win this year’s edition with a record high score; the greens are too smooth, the course too open. There’s also no water in play aside from a marsh along the first hole.
As with any tournament, scores will likely fall upon the bell curve; some players will find the fescue more often than others, and those players likely won’t win, but that’s not a bad thing. Everyone plays the same course, and players who understand that and take things in stride (like Dustin Johnson, the king of taking things in stride) are more likely to succeed than those players who see a 500-yard par 4 and can’t get over it.
Don’t all rush out at once to place your bets on Kevin Na.