***2018 US Open Golf Thread***
- Thread starter BigJCy
- Start date
I'd be perfectly happy to never see another major winner go better than -5. I watch enough cookie cutter golf the rest of the year. If that means players ******** and moaning all four rounds at the majors, so be it.
there's really only two things that can affect pro golfers these days: wind and firm greens. humans can only control one of those things (sometimes), and it can make things worse.
Two US Opens and the Phoenix Open, and a win on the European tour. Two majors are worth 7 or 8 secondary tournaments in my book. Not saying he's the game's top player by any stretch, but he's among the top 10 or 15 names in the game right now IMO. #9 in the world after that win.
Yes, I knew about the Euro-Tour win, he may never have got going without playing there first.
It's my disdain for the U.S. Open showing through.
If these guys don't want technology pulled back, and they mostly say they don't, they're going to have to deal with the USGA pushing boundaries and every once in a hole or two. You want this fixed? Roll the ball back in a fashion that takes 10% of the distance away. Then the USGA can keep those greens at a 9 and still offer a challenging setup.
That would have been a challenging setup if they had every round like yesterday. Erin Hills was a challenging setup. If you played well, you scored. If you didn't, you really struggled. Nothing wrong with that. The pins and greens don't have to be crazy to do any of that.
I remember Jack talking about one of the par fours at Muirfield Village.
In his prime the players had to deal with bunkering and the dogleg so they hit 3 wood and 3 iron.
Today, with the tee 50 yards back it's driver and flip wedge.
It's a different game.
In his prime the players had to deal with bunkering and the dogleg so they hit 3 wood and 3 iron.
Today, with the tee 50 yards back it's driver and flip wedge.
It's a different game.
I'd be all for a rollback, but unfortunately my opinion means exactly zero. I'm all for making it as difficult as possible tee to green. Long rough, shaved fringes etc. I'd like to see more interrupted fairways to force long iron play.
I just don't think the lightening fast greens with impossible pins somehow make it a better game. Sure the scores look like the old days, but it's an entirely different type of challenging and not fun to watch in my opinion.
I think what you are not understanding is that while people are complaining about the course being unfair, those people want to see a challenging course setup and reward for hitting a good shot into a green. When you hit a good shot it that doesn't hold the green or a putt that rolls off the green isn't a good thing and that isn't fair to the player that hit the shot. The setup needs to have a happy medium. The course yesterday was obviously to eat for a US Open. Most true golfers or golf fans want to watch a good test but watching that tournament Saturday was awful.
I understand that completely. What the people complaining don't understand is how hard that is to do in today's game. The USGA is constantly trying to sit right on that line and when the forecast is off just little, it gets crossed and since bashing the USGA for anything and everything during US Open week seems to be the trendy thing to do, they just get hammered. There were two holes with issues all week and the greens were never approaching being to firm. They may have been too fast for those pins. Good shots were rewarded even into those holes. What I don't think the pros like is when they have to calculate that, on 15 for instance, a 20 yard miss short is better than a 1 yard miss long. They are used to playing setups where there is a much smaller difference in those directional misses.
Long rough is great. There's been a lot of talk about the width at Shinnecock as well. Sure, it was wide but the effective width of the fairway matters. All 50 yards of fairway isn't equal. I actually loved their setup tee to green. A lot of width but if you didn't find it, you had nothing.
And he doesn't really play as many of the lesser tournaments as some guys. Very majors focused.
Well it is the USGAs fault that it was that far off from the morning to the afternoon. U can't gamble with that when you can change the pins slightly and still making it challenging.
