Huggan Talks To Ogilvy About Setup, State Of Game

John Huggan chats with Geoff Ogilvy after his second round 70 left him two shots back, and asks him what no one thought to ask in his press conference: how is a fan of classic architecture dealing with the shallow USGA setup.

First, Huggan wins for best lead of the week:

A measure of the relative blandness inherent in so many professional golfers during the early part of the 21st century is that Ian Poulter, by doing little more than wearing colourful trousers, is looked upon by many as a bit of character.
In a sport that has, over the past 150 years or so, produced more great literature than any other, and no shortage of diverse and entertaining personalities, this is a sad state of affairs

Still, amid this sea of blandness it remains possible to find the odd free thinker. One such man is Geoff Ogilvy...

Here's what Ogilvy had to say:

"It's almost offensive where they have cut the fairways out there, but I'm trying to enjoy it. It isn't easy, though. This tournament is all about grinding. You could play well here and still feel like you played badly. All it takes is a couple of bad breaks or missing a fairway by a couple of feet in the wrong place and you are shooting 80-odd. But I guess a major is supposed to be like that, in a way."

"Two important aspects of modern golf have gone in completely the wrong direction," he maintains. "Most things are fine. Greens are generally better, for example. But the whole point of the game has been lost. Ben Hogan said it best. His thing was that you don't measure a good drive by how far it goes, you analyse its quality by its position relative to the next target. That doesn't exist in golf any more.

"The angle of attack and the shape of the shot mean nothing nowadays. It is 'Can you hit it through the goalposts?' on every hole. And so the game becomes a one-dimensional test of execution, time after time after time." Still, for all its basic tedium, Ogilvy has so far done a more than fair job of quelling his misgivings about golf, US Open-style.

"It's a different mindset you've got to set yourself," he continued. "If you get yourself in the right mindset, anyone can do it out here when it's tough. You've just got to adjust where your brain is. You've just got to be able to read what is a good score and not a good score. This week you can be as much as four over par after nine holes and not be in bad shape. That's a big adjustment from the courses and events we normally play."

U.S. Open Reads: Early Saturday Edition

Lawrence Donegan with his always entertaining perspective, even if it's filed at about 2 p.m. EST.

Seth Davis blogs that the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel picked the wrong week to stop sending their respected beat writer to a tournament.

Saturday's tee times are posted in case you were wondering how they have positioned things for NBC's strong prime-time lead in.

Hey if you're looking for a reason to root against David Duval Saturday, check out his latest Golf Digest interview where he talks about his putting on all that weight and what a bad guy Ben Crenshaw is for writing a book after the Ryder Cup. Gosh it's great to have him back.

Mark Soltau offers a great anecdote on Sergio Garcia and a driver he planned to dispose of before a USGA official had a better idea.

Stats of the day can be viewed by going to the USGA's stats link and then clicking from there (direct links USGA...they work). Friday's eye-openers:

The field's averaged 50% on fairways hit and 50.8% of their greens in regulation in round 2

Cost of rough was just under .5 for round two (better convene a championship committee meeting Saturday morning!). 

The average tee shot distance climbed to 292.1 in round 2

Of the toughest "cost of rough" holes, the non-tiered rough holes took a toll Friday, with Nos. 5, 6, and 11 all ranking over .5.

Moving the tee up 70 or so yards on No. 12 brought the scoring average down to 5.239 from 5.404 in round 1.

The fairway hit % on the horribly contoured 15th: 36.5% in round 1, 40.0% in round two. (That's a flawed setup when you are talking about the best players in the world playing to a soft fairway with the best equipment in the history of the game.)

Less silly but just as unfairly contoured (yes, I used the dreaded unfair word...deal with it!), is No. 8. 53.8% hit the fairway in round 1, 43.9% in round 2.

Finally, Jim McCabe writes about The Country Club's interest in the 2013 U.S. Amateur and floats this thought on Merion receiving the 2013 U.S. Open: 

So why isn't the 100th anniversary of Ouimet's win going to be celebrated at the place where it took place? Merion hasn't had a US Open since 1981. The knock was that Merion, at roughly 6,900 yards, was too short and with the ball going too far and classic layouts being obsolete, some believe David Fay, the executive director of the USGA, and his colleagues wanted to prove you could bring a competitive US Open there.

In other words, to show they haven't lost the battle on equipment. Gee, I can't imagine they'd ever do such a thing. Just look at the fairways this week.

The First 36

Okay, I'm bored. Time to head to the beach. (It's 78 with a light breeze and no smog here in the home of the homeless).

With Winged Foot playing the players instead of the players playing the course, I'm going to take in some some sun.

I know this whole humiliating the players instead of identifying them is the USGA way, and I kow it makes bad golfers feel good about themselves. But this is deadly.

Your thoughts on the first two rounds? 

The Latest From The Press Tent

Err, media center.

Seth Davis blogs on the foul mood of the assembled inkslingers, Nikon v. Canon experts and other assorted moochers lounging around the media hub.

And not because half just of the writers had to scrap maudlin, pre-prepared, GWAA award-worthy, father-son column based on a Tiger Woods run at the title.

No, it seems their wireless is iffy and that they aren't too excited about the leaderboard. Can't blame 'em.

Ogilvy's Post Round 2 Comments

From ASAP:

Q. How was the course playing today compared to yesterday?

GEOFF OGILVY: To be fair, I think at first the first few holes were probably easier than they were yesterday afternoon, then it progressively got harder. Every green you got on was a little browner than the one before and a bit faster and glassier and it starts bouncing. By the end of the day there were some pretty big bounces on the greens. I'm glad I'm finished. This afternoon it's going to be pretty hard work for them.

And...

Q. You have a pretty good record in majors. Any part of the learning process or something that you're taking out there?

GEOFF OGILVY: I mean, a 20 something last year at Pinehurst, I was like, I could probably do all right. Before that I didn't think I could do any good in a U.S. Open because I don't drive it very straight. I would have said it's the least likely of the four for me to do well in.

After last year, I thought, you know, there must be something in there that allows me to get there in a U.S. Open. Then I played great at St. Andrews, great at Baltusrol, and Baltusrol was similar to a U.S. Open setup. I think I get in a better frame of mind in majors than I maybe get in regular tournaments.

This is fun...

Q. Would you go through your birdies and bogeys starting with 11.

Finish why you do well in the majors.

Oops, someone didn't like that attempt at a rally kill!

GEOFF OGILVY: Because you have to be. You have to finish well, otherwise you're going home early, and you only gets four chances a year at it maybe. For some reason, I seem to handle adversity better in a major. I seem to have been, anyway. If I'm 2 over after 5 in a regular Tour event, I'm probably not the most cheerful guy in the world, but I was quite fine today. I was not stressing at all because that's kind of what you do.

I don't know, I think four times a year you've got to have your best you've got to bring your brain and your patience, and if you don't, you're not going to do any good. You've got a choice, and I'm trying to have a better one.

And...

Q. Are you surprised that the defending champ, looks like he's out of the tournament?

GEOFF OGILVY: No, you can play well here and get a few bad breaks and shoot 80 before you know it. I played with David Howell and Bo Van Pelt and did nothing wrong, and a couple holes in a row, they hit a couple bad shots and they're done for. It's pretty brutal out there. You've got to try and avoid the train wrecks. If you hit a bad shot, try and get a bogey and get away. You're only one bad swing away from a big number out there.

Q. Is it a different player who excels in a tournament where par is a real good score as opposed to 7 under?

GEOFF OGILVY: I don't know, it's hard to say. It's a different mindset you've got to set yourself. If you get yourself in the right mindset, anyone can do it out here when it's tough. You've just got to adjust where your brain is. Normally if you're going over par on the courses that we play regularly, you're really not going very well. But you can be 4 over through nine holes here and not be in bad shape. You've just got to tell yourself, you've really got to be able to read what is a good score and not a good score.

At a regular Tour event it's hard to read what a good score is. Sometimes you shoot 4 over and there's eight guys that shot 8 under.

That's why I think it helps to watch the leaderboard, because you have two or three bogeys, and you're like, everyone else is doing this, so it's got to be pretty hard out here.

No questions about the setup for the one player who has shown and ability to offer articulate thoughts on the subject?? 

Tiger's Struggle

Brett Avery summed up Tiger's second round 76 best in his on-site, hole-by-hole blog:

Woods' tee shot barely stays out of the fairway on the left and his second checks up short of the green. His shoulders are slumped as he walks to the green and the gallery barley musters a saluting round of applause. It is hard to believe his second came up short of the green, especially factoring in the downwind conditions, but this has been a hard-to-believe two days. The reigning U.S. Open and Amateur champions and arguably the greatest player in the games' history are all double-digits over par. Woods' third skips past the hole and he misses for par. That puts him 12 over for 36 holes. When he holes out he is tied for 118th place. His statistics are nothing short of deplorable: Seven fairways, 18 greens, 63 putts, 3 birdies, 21 pars, nine bogeys and three double bogeys.

Tiger was up front after the round:

Q. Tell us what your emotional state is right now.

TIGER WOODS: Pissed. That pretty much sums it up right there. I thought I was playing well enough to shoot an under par round today, and I didn't do that.

Q. Was it rust?

TIGER WOODS: No, not rust. Unfortunately I just didn't put it together at the right time. I just didn't execute properly, and consequently, I shot 6 over.

Q. Was there a moment today where (inaudible).

TIGER WOODS: No.

Q. You thought as you kept grinding, you still thought you were going to turn it around?

TIGER WOODS: You've always got to feel that way. I felt like if I just kept going, kept plodding along, I could have turned it around any time with one putt or one shot. And I made two good saves there on 18 and 1 and thought that that would be pretty good. Then made a good par there on 3. All in all, I thought I could have turned it around there.

Q. This is kind of a tough tournament and a tough venue to come back. Talk about that.

TIGER WOODS: It is. It's playing really hard. The golf course is very difficult. The wind is up now, just like it was yesterday afternoon. Marginal shots are just going to get killed here; it's just the nature of this golf course. Any U.S. Open, but more so on this golf course, but any U.S. Open venue that we play, any marginal shot here just gets penalized more so than any other Open.

Q. You've never missed a cut in a major. Can you talk about that?

TIGER WOODS: It's not something you want to have happen. I've gone, I guess, a while without missing one. Unfortunately I missed this one, and hopefully I can win the British.

Q. (Inaudible).

TIGER WOODS: Yeah, I knew if I made one birdie coming in and a couple pars, the ten shot rule would get me in.

Q. 20/20 hindsight, would you have (inaudible).

TIGER WOODS: No, I was not ready to play golf.

Q. What's next?

TIGER WOODS: Practice.

Q. Will you play before the British?

TIGER WOODS: Probably the Western.

10 x 4 (Or Less) Today

Only 10 hole locations today within 4 or less paces of the edge.

It is great that they are using the recently restored hole location on 18, as we wondered about early in the week, where you can see a photo showing where the old green boundary was.

U.S. Open Reads: Late Friday Edition

The Journal News keeps up their fine coverage, first with Andrew Gross focusing on 12th hole play.

And Sam Weinman looks at the difficulty of the course, with "Massacre" comparisons already being made.

Ed Sherman also writes about the course and has this from Fred Funk:  "If [Open officials] want 7 or 8 over to win, they have proven they can do that," Furyk added. "They did it a long time ago. It would be all in the setup."

You mean, they would make it all about themselves? No, not the USGA!

Jim Salisbury warns that Tiger should be careful what he wishes for with the greens, and predicts faster surfaces for today's round.

David Barrett followed the Villegas, Hend, Holmes pairing and reports that they were kept in check by the setup, except on the 6th hole.

And from Ray Fager's Baltimore Sun column: "During Wednesday's conference call about the U.S. Open, host Dan Hicks mentioned how Phil Mickelson might have four drivers in use during the tournament and then said about his analyst partner: 'Johnny Miller has four different makeup packs.'"

U.S. Open Reads: Early Friday Edition

Andrew Weiss has the Aussie perspective, focusing on Geoff Ogilvy's play in this story, and on Ogilvy and Tiger's thoughts on the greens in this sidebar.
 
John Hopkins of the Times writes about...who else, but Monty, while Lawrence Donegan does the same only in more entertaining fashion.

Doug Ferguson has the American perspective on round one, while John Huggan looks at Phil Mickelson's round and talks to his masseur swing coach, Rick Smith.

Golfonline has first round audio analysis from Peter Kostis and Dave Pelz. They also offer some notes on the opening round.

For course stats, you have to go to the USGA's scoring page and then click on the Course Summary link to salivate over those cost of rough stats, which are new this year and speak such volumes about the state of the game. Eye-openers:

Averages putts per GIR on No. 1:  2.10 (only hole over 2)
Round one scoring average: 75.984
Driving distance: 289.2
Cost of rough on No. 14:  0.784
Cost of rough on non-tiered rough holes: .571 (5), .348 (6), .536 (11)

Boy I'm glad they didn't tier it on No. 6, more birdies would have been made and the USGA would have looked silly! Perish the thought! 

Finally Seth Davis has several entertaining blog posts about the media center antics over at SI.com, though someone needs to het him a New York Post after this post:

-- There's a rumor going around the press tent that Tiger Woods is staying not at a local hotel but on his yacht, which is presumably parked somewhere either on Long Island Sound or the Hudson River. If I were a real journalist, I would try to chase down that glistening nugget before passing it along to my readers, but since I am blogging I can put it out there and ask you all to chase it down for me. Any takers?

The New York Post story is here in case Davis wants to read it.

Tiger's First Round Comments

He has issues with the greens being too slow.

TIGER WOODS: I know the greens will be a little bit quicker. The guys were saying that it's -- we're not used to it in the U.S. Open. We just need to make the adjustment. We have plenty of time to on the putting green.

Q. Mike Davis a couple days ago said that you asked him, "When are you going to make these greens faster." Would you like to see them faster?

TIGER WOODS: You're used to playing U.S. Opens with fast greens; these aren't. With the pitch on these greens, you have to keep it on the slower side; we're just not used to being in the U.S. Open with greens this slow. If anything, the greens should have been slower last year. You have to make the adjustment. We're all playing the same golf course. You just have to understand that they're just a little bit slower than we're used to.

Q. (Inaudible) low score that could be had out there tomorrow?

TIGER WOODS: The greens are soft on some holes. Some holes are spongy and stringy. You can throw the ball in there and have it stop virtually where it landed. But in the wind hole, after three, I wasn't very happy.

Poor Mike Davis

According to a trusted eyewitnesses, USGA course setup man Mike Davis was seen several times in his cart today at Winged Foot accompanied NOT by the sitting Championship Committee Chair Jim Hyler (as is custom), but by USGA President and Citation jet man Walter Driver.

Poor Mike couldn't even enjoy his first day at the Open in charge.

USA Today: Lost Art of Shotmaking?

Thanks to reader Sean for the heads up on this great unbylined story in the USA Today (by Tom Spousta?) on the lost art of shotmaking. Some of the juiciest quotes, starting with Lee Trevino:

"You could punch little shots in there, punch little shots in here. Low drivers down the left side. Fly the ball to a spot and let it roll. Punch shots into greens as hard as bricks. ... You had to place every shot in the right position," Trevino says. "I was carving drivers left to right. I'd even hit some irons right to left. Jack was doing the same thing. People think all Jack did was hit it 5 miles and up in the air. He could hit it low, fade it, hook it; he could do whatever the heck he wanted with it.

"They called me more of a shot-maker than Jack," Trevino continues, "because I didn't have the high ball. I had to hit more weird shots than he did. Heck, they think Tiger Woods can hit a ball high? Shoot, Jack could hit a 1-iron so high and it would come down so soft you could catch it in your mouth."

And:

"It's non-existent. The kids out here are just hitting it as hard as they can and taking short clubs and whacking it out of the rough," says Kenny Perry, who has noticed fewer players in recent years working on shaping shots at the practice range.

"It's a dying art. There's just not many people that even want to try to hit those shots," says Corey Pavin, the 1995 U.S. Open champion who sealed his victory with a 4-wood approach shot he shaped right-to-left at the 72nd hole.

You can add Trevino to the anti-America, technophobic agenda setters:

"There's no such animal as shot-making anymore," Trevino says. "And it's not the fault of the player. It's the equipment."

Vijay has a simple take on the matter, and our friends in Fairhaven will probably sending the USA Today a love note for the second graph:

"The ball flies so much straighter now that it's almost useless to even try it," Singh says. "If you want to hit a fade, you really have to move it left to right to get something out of it. If you can hit it straight and long, why try to shape it?"

Pavin, Furyk, Perry and other players agree things began to spin toward less shot-making in the mid-1990s, when Titleist came out with the Tour 90 and Tour 100 model balls. Players liked the ball but noticed that a different dimple pattern made it more difficult to fade or draw shots as far as they did.

"It's almost impossible to hit those shots anymore," Pavin says.

The story also looks at modern course design as part of the problem:

Modern architecture, with its forced carries over hazards and elevated greens, also conspired with technology such as cavity-backed irons to force players into an aerial game.

"A lot of courses these days are built for high, hard shots," says Furyk, the 2003 U.S. Open champion. "The guys have the talent. ... It's just not called for as much."

Still, Furyk says fewer players using less imagination means shot-making "is slowly going to diminish over time."

Nicklaus agrees that if players don't face such adversity, they won't develop those skills. To that end, he used thick-pronged rakes that left wide rows in sand traps at his Memorial Tournament two weeks ago. Bunkers truly became hazards rather than a safe haven from thick rough.

"They're quite capable of playing the shots. But they've never grown up having to play shots," Nicklaus says.

12 x 4 = First Round Hole Locations

Reader Taylor noted that 12 of the first round hole locations are 4 (or less) paces from the green edge.

Marucci On Merion

The former Walker Cupper is the only one to have wondered about the state of the game circa 2013 as it relates to Merion's relevance:

"There's a universal feeling that this is part of our legacy. It's taken a lot of time [to get the Open back], but it's just thrilling. I don't know what's going to happen in the next 7 years, with the ball and clubs, but from a shot-maker's standpoint there's not a better course. It requires skills at all levels."

Phil's First Round Comments

Not much in Mickelson's press conference, but he did have this to say about the tiered rough:

Q. How much did you end up in the graduated first cut rather than the deep stuff?

PHIL MICKELSON: I remember being in the deepest stuff twice, on 15 and 1. I may have been in it more than that, but I remember those two for sure. That stuff is thick and tough to get it out of. I hit a couple chop shots to get it up and out of that grass and I was okay and I was able to scramble for pars, but it's very, very tough.

The graduated rough, the first cut, you can advance it up by the green. It's hard to hit the green. I don't know if I have actually got one on the surface there. But on the 8th hole I was able to hit it just short of the green and not have too difficult of an up and down, and a couple holes you can get it up by the green, but still, I don't think I ever got one on the green.