USGA's Davis: You Will Not Win U.S. Open Just Showing Up
/A bold pronouncement from USGA Executive Director Mike Davis in suggesting two practice rounds won't be enough to win at Chambers Bay. Especially since defending champion Martin Kaymer told the Fox Sports U.S. Open Media Day show he was more than likely copying his formula from 2014 of not playing the course until U.S. Open Monday.
From an AP story by Tim Booth on Monday's U.S. Open Media Day launch:
"I would contend that there is no way a player will have success here at Chambers Bay unless he really studies the golf course and learns it," Davis said Monday during media day for the U.S. Open. "The idea of coming in and playing two practice rounds and just walking it and using your yardage book, that person is done. Will not win the U.S. Open."
This would seem to suggest that qualifiers and others unable to get to the course before Open week will be at a disadvantage, but that could also be said for other venues packed with local knowledge elements.
Davis also had this to say about the playing style required:
"This is a one-of-a-kind site for us at a U.S. Open," Davis said. "There is going to be some players that just love this ground game and love the imagination and embrace it. And then there are other players who just want predictability. They want something right in front of them. They don't want to have to guess what is going to happen after the ball lands. It's just a different mindset."
**Luke Kerr-Dineen with a nice roundup of comments in reaction to another revelation by Mike Davis: that some tees may be placed on unlevel surfaces.
Here are Davis’s comments from media day:
The routing itself is very interesting on this property. If you really study it, on the front nine, twice you climb the hill and you come back down and then on the back nine you traverse your way up the hill and come back down one time. And it really does make for interesting ebb and flow to the test of golf and certainly it adds to the endurance in terms of walking the golf course too.
But there are some neat things. I mean, for instance, one of the things that's unique to this is the architects put in what they refer to it as ribbon tees, these tees that just kind of meander. And it allows us to put tee markers where we want. And in some cases we may end up putting tee markers on slight slopes as opposed to you think, well, you're always going to have teeing markers on very flat areas. But there may be some where we give the players a little downhill slope, a little uphill slope, a side slope. So that's interesting.
