Did the USGA "Nail It" this year?

[laconic517]

17 is always a tough hole. A long irons shot with wind swirling to an angled green, it is just really hard to stop the ball when the green gets firm. I don't see how it's unfair, just hard. They all had to play the same hole. We also saw some really bad tee shots on that hole. McDowell and Ernie each missed about 30 yards short and left.

its unfair because only 7 people hit the green. To get it to stay on you have to land the ball in the rough and get lucky. Bad shots (those 20 yard short shots) were better off than good shots that hit the green. It was just a horrible hole for greens that hard

[pittpanther]

theres something to be said when a great shot lands on green and trickles 30 ft off the green. that does not make for great golf...it makes for awful golf.

Obviously then that wasn't a good shot. Perhaps they should have instead hit the fairway and run it up onto the green?

[Weezy]

It was a tough setup, yes, but not as tough as the players made it.Sunday was mostly boring and non-eventful (blowups aside), but for me that was moreso down to the players than the course.I'm disappointed cetain players performed so badly but I'm not gonna blame the course for it like a lot of people seem to be doing.The likes of Ernie and Phil have no excuse, putting was pathetic.A 3 foot putt is a 3 foot putt regardless of the green, and a Pro golfer should be making those every time.

i totally agree with him.

So you guys think that every great player in the world just had 4 off days at the same time? Not hardly. If you guys liked to watch that i will go down to the local muni and make some video tapes. Pretty much the same thing, i will even announce the action and call em phil and tiger for ya. 20 bucks each shipped!!! It was a catastrophe and i would venture to say the least watched major since tiger first joined the tour that included him in it.

[jamo]

its unfair because only 7 people hit the green. To get it to stay on you have to land the ball in the rough and get lucky. Bad shots (those 20 yard short shots) were better off than good shots that hit the green. It was just a horrible hole for greens that hard

I don't think that makes it "unfair". Unfair is a situation that affects some people and not others. 17 was a tough hole, but it was a tough hole for everyone. Everyone played in the afternoon so the green was the same firmness for the entire field. Everyone had to try to land the ball short and run it up.

There was really no way for them to do anything else. If they gave that one hole extra water they would be adding inconsistency to the putting speed, and i doubt the players would even like that.

[Weezy]

Isn't that the whole idea of a major championship? If you like birdie fests, then watch the week in and week out boredom of the John Deere Classic type of tourney. To win a major you should be required to hit fairways and greens and have a stellar short game when you miss... or pay the price. It should also require near perfection to post an under par round. Otherwise, what's the point of calling it a major?

Umm no like i said above you can watch bad golf all day every day for free at the local muni. Do you go there to watch it? This was like a boxing match where the opponents just ran around the ring to see who passes out first...u wanna watch that?

[TopWalker]

The USGA created a great test of golf. The winner should be around Even and that's where GM finished up.

At the U.S. Open pars = birdies. If you want low scores then watch pretty much every other tournament out there. Sorry, but one week a year I want to see them suffer a bit! Now they know how I feel every time I go out and play!

It was a war of attrition and that's what the U.S. Open should be about. For those who disagree I present to you the Travelers Championship where the winner will be -18 to -22. Yawn.

TW

[laconic517]

I don't think that makes it "unfair". Unfair is a situation that affects some people and not others. 17 was a tough hole, but it was a tough hole for everyone. Everyone played in the afternoon so the green was the same firmness for the entire field. Everyone had to try to land the ball short and run it up.

You cant land it short and run it up because of the shape of the green. When the pin was on the front it was playable. The back pin was just stupid.

[atrapasuenos]

I was hoping to see a very exciting round yesterday but I just lost my time watching it. I was hoping to see a battle out there, but it wasn't...

Cheers!

[JWILL203]

Overall I thought it was a pretty good set up. It seemed like everyone had some birdie opportunities but no one capitalized.

[Titleist_ProV1x]

The shortest US Open course in quite a while, yet each day only a dozen or fewer pro's managed to break par. And the winner was exactly at par! I think the USGA got it perfect this year - the right combination of difficulty and challenge.

WTF? you like to see + scores? C'mon now, I like to see lots of birdies and low low scores -20 something, the USGA sucks, that has to be the most boring tournament I've ever been to, absolutely awful golf

[CalBoomer]

I just can't believe some of the comments here. Isn't a tournament with 5 or 6 players within three shots of each other going into the back 9 exciting? Isn't a par on the 14th or 17th hole just as indicative of good play as a birdie at a zillion lesser courses? Living on the West Coast, I got to go to the first round on Thursday. Although it may be hard to believe, the course looked much harder in person than it did on TV. People just have to recalibrate to understand that par is very good golf on such a set-up. Why should a cliff edge be any different that a water hazard? You roll off one and roll into the other. The good golfer avoids the hazard as best he can. And if he can't, he gets punished. I really agree with the prior comment that, if your big thrill is watching birdies and -20 scores on dull flat layouts, watch any of the other tournaments to your heart's content. Or maybe just go watch pros hit on a driving range. Pretty exciting stuff.

[Shindig]

My overall review: it was a near-perfect combination of Parkland and Links courses. I've seen the February event a few times, and I've "played" the course on video games, but I don't think I really appreciated just how nice Pebble Beach is until this past weekend. And I watched enough of it on Sunday (Golf Digest challenge until end of tournament).

You cant land it short and run it up because of the shape of the green. When the pin was on the front it was playable. The back pin was just stupid.

The back pin took the likely birdie out of play and, while I'd like to see hole 71 in just about any tournament be capable of yielding a birdie, I don't have a problem with it. It looked to me like it would be possible to run the ball towards the middle of the green and putt it to within a makable distance.

[ozgolfer63]

I dont get the criticism about the course set up, particularly the 17th?? It's a par 3, doesn't that mean you have 3 shots to get the ball into the hole to score par?? Where is it written that your 1st shot must be on the green? Seems to me that these guys only get to play a course set up like this once a year and as a consequence they tend to struggle with it when the pressure builds on Sunday arvo. Give them this type of course set up 4-5 weeks in a row and watch the quality of golf improve and the scores drop well below par.

[jamo]

Umm no like i said above you can watch bad golf all day every day for free at the local muni. Do you go there to watch it? This was like a boxing match where the opponents just ran around the ring to see who passes out first...u wanna watch that?

WTF? you like to see + scores? C'mon now, I like to see lots of birdies and low low scores -20 something, the USGA sucks, that has to be the most boring tournament I've ever been to, absolutely awful golf

Yes I want to watch that. It's the one tournament all year (well, maybe the British and the PGA) that isn't a birdie fest. I want to see the pros struggle every now and then.

The USGA created a great test of golf. The winner should be around Even and that's where GM finished up.

My point exactly.

You cant land it short and run it up because of the shape of the green. When the pin was on the front it was playable. The back pin was just stupid.

Yes, it was hard. But not unfair.

[James_Black]

It was all about course management.

I love to see birdies, but a birdie on a easy course isn't as rewarding as a birdie at the U.S Open.
Tom Watson managed to come 29th, not bad for a 60 year old.

If you go for the sucker pins you'll get stung.
If you play properly you'll do well, Tom showed that. McDowell showed that too.

[NormH3]

WTF? you like to see + scores? C'mon now, I like to see lots of birdies and low low scores -20 something, the USGA sucks, that has to be the most boring tournament I've ever been to, absolutely awful golf

Some of us like to see the Pros sweat a little for their paycheck. There are alot of factors at Pebble. Green size, wind, narrow fairways, nasty rough. Maybe you would be happier if they had it at a muni somewhere. Take a look at this from an earlier article. Where do you see a -20?

http://thesandtrap.com/the_numbers_g...s_a_good_score

[dbuck]

I don't think they exactly nailed it, but I think they came pretty close. I didn't see any problems with the overall setup-the long accurate drivers didn't have much problem, wild drives did. As for 14, they had a heads up at the AT&T;, so they should have been expecting that. I think most complaints concerned the greens and there may have been some validity to some of this. As Tiger said though, "Its poa annua..." In the south, poa annua is a "weed" and course superintendants do all they can to irradicate it. Pebble has a different climate, but I think it is harder to have poa fast and smooth than it is with bermuda or bent. I don't think the players had as much complaint with the speed as with the bumpiness.

[Awsi Dooger]

Im amazed no one has brought up how unfair 17 was the whole week. I though I heard that 7 out of 80 or so golfers hit the green in regulation on sunday. I bet they were all in the morning too.

I didn't think they varied 17 enough, never playing it from beyond the path or with the pin to the right. The Saturday location was interesting otherwise it was virtually the same hole three times.

The tee boxes should be wider, allowing more options like #7 on Sunday. If a guy hits a hard draw or cut off the tee, let them set up for it. I had to laugh at the complaints about #14. I played that hole once and parred it, unaware of the danger right or left, three weeks before the famous Watson/Nicklaus Open in 1982. I was in the rough to the left, about 100 yards from the green but with a very good lie, and staring at a bunker that looked absolutely cavernous. I damn sure didn't want to be there so straight beyond the hole seemed logical. It worked out with simple two putt from the back fringe.