And I just don't apprehend why the USGA continues suffering with course setup. The answer is easy.
There is a lot of talk approximately the "architect's cause" and ensuring that the path is treated in a manner that preserves that purpose. Yet the USGA always attempts to set up US Open publications in a manner that ignores the clean implications in their selected course's layout.
There are limits to how a long way you can push any route's design. In their efforts to "take a look at" the gamers, the USGA takes a conventional design, with vegetables that the architect designed with contours supposed to be performed at perhaps 10-11 on the stimpmeter, and they push the ones vegetables as much as 13. They push them until the floor is brown and dying -- excuse me, but are not they called "veggies" for a reason? -- and then act surprised when excellent pictures roll off them like they had been made of reasonably-priced linoleum.
When the USGA wants to take a look at a participant's capacity to hit a fairway, do they dry them out until they're so brown and tough that each ball rolls into the hard? No, they slender the fairway and grow the grass round them a bit higher -- no longer so much that the ball can't be hit a respectable distance -- so pictures that are not hit flawlessly (but aren't horrible either) demand a price however can nevertheless be performed.
So why don't they just do the same with the greens? All they have to do is make the greens a bit smaller. Decrease their perimeter by a foot or two, so that a well-struck shot has room to land but a poorly-struck one won't stay on the green. Let the grass in the surround grow a bit taller -- not so much that the ball must be dug out of the rough, but enough that a putt or a chip takes a little extra skill. And then they can stimp the greens at the speed intended by the architect.
[ADDENDUM: I wrote this late Saturday night and, when I woke up Sunday morning, realized I forgot to mention that shaving the edges of the greens -- so poorly-hit shots rolled off -- would be alright as well. The pin position may demand that you hit away from the pin and leave a longer putt; that's okay too. My point is that green speeds should be appropriate to the design of the green complex, so that a well-hit shot always holds and is not left to luck.]
Is that surely so hard, parents? Test the gamers by way of giving them a barely smaller goal, instead of remodeling grass into stone?
This isn't always about trying out the players. This is ready pursuing an unrealistic purpose, one based on how gadget from a century past behaved. If they want gamers to shoot 15-over, they could play the USA Open in a cow pasture. At least it would be performed on grass, the manner the sport turned into supposed.
But it nonetheless would not be golf, now would it not?
I agree that the 16-under score of last year's event at Erin Hills wasn't what we want to see at a US Open. But setting things up so the game resembles craps instead of golf isn't the answer. This time, the final pairing will be two players who, if the course has been just reasonably consistent all day, probably would not have been in contention.
If the USGA can't apprehend how to set up a truthful golfing course that STAYS truthful for an entire round, possibly it is time they permit someone else take over direction preparation.
End of rant.
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