DeadMan and PhillyK Play Pinehurst No. 2

[DeadMan]

@phillyk and I played Pinehurst #2 this morning after playing in the Newport Cup. We're going to have a little write up and everything when we get back in front of computers. But I wanted to post a little preview for you all:

More to follow in the next few days...

Edited October 22, 2017 by DeadMan

[phillyk]

My preview, yeah I’m not supposed to be in the pinestraw but I wanted the full experience. 

[mchepp]

Eagerly awaiting the pics! I fully expect Payne Stewart poses on the 18th green.

[DeadMan]

2 minutes ago, mchepp said:

Eagerly awaiting the pics! I fully expect Payne Stewart poses on the 18th green.

Escaped our minds unfortunately. I think we were both annoyed after making bogey. You won't be surprised that I 3 putted from ~25 feet after roping a 7 iron into that green. 

[NM Golf]

I play there this Saturday. I play #8 on Friday. Looking forward to it, give me some tips!

[Wanzo]

Looking forward to the write up. Definitely on my bucket list. 

[phillyk]

4 hours ago, NM Golf said:

I play there this Saturday. I play #8 on Friday. Looking forward to it, give me some tips!

Play for the middle of the green each and every hole. No exceptions. The worst thing you could do is short side yourself. I’ll do the full write up tomorrow at work. 

[DeadMan]

5 hours ago, NM Golf said:

I play there this Saturday. I play #8 on Friday. Looking forward to it, give me some tips!

Avoid the greenside bunkers at all costs. If you end up in one, strongly consider playing at the center of the green instead of at the flag. And by strongly consider, I mean do that unless you're 100% sure you can pull off the shot without ending in another greenside bunker. 

[phillyk]

I'll start with my scorecard and talk about the course, then start uploading some pictures and videos.  

Dan, ( @DeadMan ) and I started off on #10.  For most of the course, the fairways were wide and the brush was not terribly thick.  But, if you got stuck behind or in one of those puffs of grass, you are screwed.  The greens are, generally, really small.  If you go for and hit the center of the green on every hole, you would have no more than a 30ft putt.

After 90 holes of golf at the Newport Cup, Dan and I were tired.  It only showed its teeth when we got out onto the course.  The adrenaline of playing No 2 was high on the range.  A beautiful morning fog dense enough that you could only see your PW land.  I started out well enough on Hole 10, a par 5.  Driver was hooking but playable, so I had 4 GIR through the first 4 holes giving me easy pars.  #14 I missed the green just short right, but it was an easy up and down, because I had enough green to work with and spin the ball a bit.  

Then we got our first glimpse at a par 3 and the craziness of some slopes on these greens.  I chunked my 7iron short, chipped up but fell down and off the green.  Putted instead and barely got it to the top of the slope and 2 putted from there.  Stupid double.

The next hole, though was a short par 5.  Took driver and hooked it again, but I played for it and ended in the FW.  3 wood brought my pin high left, but in a bunker.  I somehow hit a really good bunker shot to give me an up and down for birdie.

The hole after, another brutal par 3.  Into the wind and I blocked it out right and into a bunker.  I hit the bunker shot 1ft too far, it spun hard but not hard enough.  Down the opposite end of the green and slope.  Ended up with another double. 

Now onto the famous 18th hole and Sunday's Payne Stewart hole location.  Hit my drive left, what a surprise, and into the brush.  Easy lie but i wanted to attack the pin, not knowing what lies right of the green (stupid me).  I left the ball down a slope and near a bunker.  No chance of getting it close because of the slope.  2 putt bogey.

Holes 1-3 are a little easier with the greens and hole layouts, #3 I thought I hit a perfect approach, but ended up short.  So, started the back 9 with 3 pars. 

Hole 4 is a LONG par 4, 475yds from the blue tees (OH, btw, blues are the "tips," the course won't let you play from the US Open tees; there are markers for them but no tees).  I pushed my drive right after getting too annoyed with my hook.  And for the first time this round, I ended up behind that fluff of grass in the crap.  I had gotten lucky all day up to that point. No chance to hit at the green.  Ended up with my first 6 of the round (there went my chance at a no 6 round at Pinehurst).

Hole 5 is another short par 5, and I hook the drive again.  Lucky I stayed in normal crap with a full swing but I skull my 2nd from 185yds to a green side bunker.   Could only get par from there.

Next hole is our longest par 3 of the day, and somehow both us of us hit good tee shots and got our par.  Dan was a couple feet from going over the green and ruining that chance at par.

Hole 7 was my best hole of the day tee to green.  The only real dogleg on the course, had 275yds or so to clear the FW bunkers.  I hit my 3w PERFECT.  Gosh I should've been using it all day.  Striped it 290yds just over those FW bunkers to give myself a 100yd 56* wedge.  I aimed a bit right and put some hard right to left spin on it and used the slope to feed the ball to 5ft away for birdie.  This green, though, is TOUGH! Dan will tell you, unfortunately, because he had a rough hole.  I played it well but missed my birdie putt high side.

Hole 8 is another short par 5, but I push my drive right and got lucky again to have a good lie and look at the green.  But I had to hit a cut from 230yds which I don't like to try with my 3 iron.  So I took 3 wood and hit it high right, to a bunker just short of the green.  I hit another great looking bunker shot but this did not have enough spin either and it came spilling down the biggest freakin slope of the day.  No chance at par anymore, giving me my second 6 of the day.

I was done at this point.  No energy left for the last par 3.  Green was inviting, but I pulled my iron left into the green side bunker.  No spin out of there, and went sailing across and off the green.  Finished with a double to shoot 81.  

4 doubles.... 4.  UGH! Moral of the story, if you miss the green.  GO FOR THE SAFE SHOT.  Do not try the hero save.  Just put the ball on the green to give yourself a look at par.

Greens rolled around a 12 or 13 I'd say.  Definitely looked like they could go another 3ft faster too.  They held more than I thought they would too.  But the balled rolled perfectly.  No bumps or anything.  It was very nice!

I do believe, if I go out again, I could save at least 6 strokes, because of just playing it smarter when near the greens, when you missed the approach shot.  Also I would, hopefully, be somewhat recovered and hitting my tee shots better, like I was at the Newport Cup.

All in all, just a fantastic experience.  Like I said earlier, the greens are small but fair if you can hit the center of them, giving you a look at birdie.  But, if you try to attack even one pin and miss, you go from par look to double bogey VERY fast.

We didn't have time to stay at the restaurant overlooking the 18th green, but it is a popular spot for sure.  The hallway to the pro shop is filled with cool pictures and items from past championships.  Glad I made time to go.

More pictures to come!

[Golfingdad]

3 minutes ago, phillyk said:

Great write up and I'm looking forward to all of the pictures.  Just wanted to point out that it's amusing that the US Open tees on hole 8 is 33 yards behind the blue tees and on hole 16 they're 15 yards behind the blue tees and in both cases, you're allowed one less shot to get there! LOL, crazy.

[phillyk]

10 minutes ago, Golfingdad said:

Great write up and I'm looking forward to all of the pictures.  Just wanted to point out that it's amusing that the US Open tees on hole 8 is 33 yards behind the blue tees and on hole 16 they're 15 yards behind the blue tees and in both cases, you're allowed one less shot to get there! LOL, crazy.

The starter said that the FW when we played are in growing season.  So green and growing. Means less roll.  The FW during that US Open were baked! They could roll for 50+yds sometimes BUT that also meant that they were rolling near the edges of the FW and possibly into the crap.  They only water the center of the FWs.  Playing those par 5's that were par 4s for the Open, I could see why they were switched.  Yeah they were tough, but manageable had I hit driver better.

[NM Golf]

Awesome write up, I can’t wait to get there this weekend! 

[phillyk]

2 minutes ago, NM Golf said:

Awesome write up, I can’t wait to get there this weekend! 

I assume you play like me with your cap. Like I said in the post, play to the middle of greens. Its awfully tempting, I know, to attack a few pins here and there. So, if you do, just aim a flagstick towards the middle from the pin. You’ll be happy you did when you get to the green. 

But most of all, enjoy it! Its a crazy, yet great course! 

[DeadMan]

My review/write up of the round at Pinehurst #2.

Overall, Pinehurst #2 is a fantastic experience and one that I would recommend for any serious golfer. The course is incredible. The atmosphere is great, too, with people watching you tee off on 1 and finishing on 18.

We got to Pinehurst about an hour and a half before our tee time. Found the pro shop after wandering down the memorabilia hallway, including the Payne Stewart stuff from 1999. The pro shop could put a Golf Galaxy to shame with the selection of merchandise it had. You name it, the shop had the Pinehurst logo on it. It took a herculean effort to avoid buying everything in the damn store, because it was impressive. Ended up with a ball mark, a hat, and a yardage book. Bullet dodged.

(You're going to be a great dad!)

(1999 US Open winning putt)

(Trophy Case)

We go out to the driving range, and fog is rolling in. We were hoping it would lift before our round started, but it gave the place a cool, eerie vibe to it. After playing around with the FlightScope Mevo at the range a bit, we headed out to the tee.

(Looking out from the pro shop, driving range is behind that building)

(Looking back at the clubhouse from the practice green)

We played in a cart. It was cart path only. Your options are to either take a cart or take a caddy and walk. You cannot walk the course carrying your own bag. We took the cart because we didn’t want to spend the extra $60 plus tip on the caddy. In hindsight, I would recommend taking a caddy. I ended up walking down the fairway on quite a few holes just to soak in the experience more. Having a caddy isn’t my favorite thing in the world, but I would put up with it next time. Plus, the extra $60 isn’t much when considering the greens fee.

We started on the 10th hole, which is a 580 yard par 5. And the fog hadn’t lifted yet, so we weren’t sure where exactly to hit to. But it lifted when we got to the tee box on 11, so it didn’t matter much. Teeing off on 10 was fine, but it was a little anti-climactic to end on 9 instead of 18. On the other hand, I thought the front 9 was better than the back 9.

(Number 10 tee, with fog)

I don’t really want to go through the course hole by hole, or bore you with how many bunkers I was in and how much my short game sucked. I’ll give general thoughts and highlight a hole or two that I liked. Before getting to that, let’s get this out here: I played like crap. But I want to come back and play that course again, and if I’m ever near Pinehurst again, I will go out of my way to play it. It was awesome. The only other US Open course I’ve played is Torrey Pines, and Pinehurst #2 blows Torrey out of the water.

Anyways, I ended up shooting a 95 and only hitting 5 GIR. I also had 34 putts. I had one lost ball. That doesn’t make add up, you say. Well, read on…

The course is amazing. It is wide off the tee, and there’s not really much danger off the tee, except finding your ball in a tuft of wispy grass. I hit 11 of 14 fairways. Ask anybody who played with me at the Newport Cup – I’m not that consistent off the tee. It was a slightly better day that usual for me on that, but the fairways were still very generous. If you missed the fairway, you were in a sandy waste area that I’m sure you all remember from the US Open. Generally, you would catch a good lie in these areas. Unless you found the wispy long grass there, which I did once. I was almost completely stymied by it and ended up just having to whack at it and hope I got a better lie with my next shot.

(In the wispy grass. The green direction is the top of the photo. Not really many options here.)

The greens themselves aren’t actually too hard. They are domed/turtlebacked and are quite intimidating from the fairway. They look really small, although I didn’t think they were all that small when you get up there. When you get on the green, putting isn’t that bad. We estimated they were running about a 12. Mid-South supposedly ran at an 11 when played there in the Newport Cup, and these greens were noticeably faster. They aren’t tiered or anything like that. Just sloped. Like ski slopes.  

That said, these greens make the course difficult. If you miss the green in the wrong spot, bogey is the best you can do, and you’ll make a lot of double bogeys. If you are in the wrong bunker, you are completely screwed. I ended up in 8 bunkers – without hitting a single fairway bunker. Twice I went from one bunker to another around the green. I easily lost 10 strokes because of bunkers. The mistake I made was in attacking too many flags from the bunkers instead of playing to the center of the green. If you’re not a superb sand player, ignore the flag. I want to go back and make myself play just onto the center of the green from the greenside sand, because I would easily be in the 80s if I did that.

If you’re not in a greenside bunker but you miss the green, you have options. There’s no rough on the course, so you can putt almost everything. Which I did, but my putting sucks, so it didn’t work as well as it should have. But you can generally putt, pitch, or chip from almost anywhere around the greens. Getting the speed right is the difficult part. I never flew a green, but it looked like beyond the greens is dead. I came up short several times, which was where your miss needed to be on most holes.

I generally hit the ball like crap on approaches, with some exceptions. I was mentally and physically spent from the Newport Cup, I think. My irons were 20 yards shorter than the day before. My decision making was, well, non-existent. And this is a course that demands precision when approaching the greens. Not the greatest formula.

With that out of the way, onto the holes. I want to highlight a few cool ones. 18 was my favorite. The setting was so cool, with the clubhouse in the background and people watching you play around the green. Selecting a good line off the tee was key – right side of the fairway yields a shorter approach and more fairway to work with. I managed to find the right side of the fairway off the tee. I then got one of our playing partners to take some pictures of me hitting my approach, and the pictures are so cool. 18 was the Payne Stewart pin position when we played it, and I roped a 7 iron to about 25 feet. There was a crowd, and they would applaud good shots around the green. With the clubhouse there, it was astonishing.

(Addressing the ball on 18)

(Backswing complete on 18)

(Follow through on 18. This photo gives me goosebumps, and that shot was pure.)

4 and 5 were visually stunning as well. 4 is a long par 4 that winds around and into a little low spot on the course. It’s the most remote part of the course, surrounded by some trees and multimillion-dollar homes. 5 plays back up the hill as a par 5, and it’s visually tricky. It looks like your line from the tee is the left side, but that brings a fairway bunker and the waste area into play. You cannot see the extent of the waste area from the tee. You want to favor the left side to get a shorter shot into the green, because it’s a reachable par 5. That brings the waste area and the lottery of getting a good lie in it into play.

(Looking back on the 5th green. You can sort of see how domed the greens are.)

Finally, the par 3s are monsters. They all played over 160, and those menacing greens make the tee shots a lot more difficult than they should be. Phil and I both hit the longest one in regulation, which was awesome. My tee shot hit the front of the green and was about 2 feet from rolling off the back because of the slope. That gives you an idea of how firm and severe the greens are.

(My birdie putt on 6, which was playing at 205)

 

(Video of @phillyk's birdie putt on 6; he made par)

 

(Video of my birdie putt on 6 ... three putted)

Some course pictures:

(View up the first fairway, from the second tee box)

(View up the 8th fairway)

(View back down the fairway on hole 8 from the green)

(Looking up the 13th hole from the tee)

I will swallow my pride and admit that I played the wrong tees. We played the tips, which were 6900 yards. While I never had an issue of reaching the greens in regulation, I didn’t have a single wedge into a par 4 green. Like I said, I was mentally and physically spent from the Newport Cup, so I think playing a box up would have been more enjoyable. If I go back, I will play from the middle tees, which are about 6300 yards. I’ll have a lot more fun with the occasional wedge rather than the constant 6 irons I was hitting.

By the way, I cannot fathom shooting a 65 from nearly 7600 like Martin Kaymer did at the US Open. This course is demanding, and it’s hard to believe that 65 could be had out there. I’m not an excellent golfer, but I’m an okay stick. The gap between me and him is a chasm that’s 50 miles wide and 10 miles deep.

Do I have complaints? Two minor ones. First, it was less penal to go further offline off the tee. The long wispy grass came into play if you were still close to the fairway, but if you went way off line and ended up under a tree, you were going to get a better lie because there was only pinestraw there. I don’t like really bad misses getting penalized less than average misses. Also, the greenside sand was inconsistent. Some bunkers were like playing out of concrete. I hit a couple of sand shots expecting there to be sand and there was none (in full disclosure, there was a “local rule” that said the bunkers weren’t actually bunkers, but I played them like bunkers). Ultimately, hit the generous fairways and avoid the bunkers, and it isn’t an issue. These are minor quibbles. 

We ended the round and went into the pro shop again. We then walked around outside for a little bit, taking some pictures in front of the Payne Stewart statue. We then had to leave pretty quickly to get to the airport. It would have been nice to stay a bit and have a beer while watching golfers come in. But that’s just a reason to come back…

(Me at the Payne Stewart statue)

Edited October 24, 2017 by DeadMan

[RussUK]

Looks stunning. Theres something about a beautiful course and blue sky that i find relaxing.

Great review. We need you to fly over here to do a review of Temple Newsome in Leeds. Its nothing like Pinehurst but you wont get many chances to play a shot off an abondoned matress or avoid kids on quad bikes .

 

[iacas]

@DeadMan, if the rule is that they’re through the green, play they that way. Just like at Kiawah Island.

Thanks for the pics.

[DeadMan]

1 hour ago, iacas said:

@DeadMan, if the rule is that they’re through the green, play they that way. Just like at Kiawah Island.

Thanks for the pics.

Good to know for next time. It didn't feel right to me, given that there were pretty clear delineations between the waste areas and actual bunkers. Still a lot I need to learn about the rules, that's for sure.

[NM Golf]

@phillyk and @DeadMan We can get a caddy for #2 at a discounted rate. Would you say its worth it?

Looks like I will be aiming at the center of the greens when I play there, I can't wait!