"And anybody good enough to play it knows what a wreck it is."
/As a conoisseur of player complaints, I have to say that the Cog Hill bashing is some of the toughest I've read and somewhat oddly timed considering that last year was the debut of Rees Jones' reestoration. But maybe what this speaks to is just how much mediocre design work--it's not like this is their first cup of Rees--the modern player will look past if a course is in good condition. If it's not, maybe the floodgates really open?
Nancy Armour shared this from Geoff Ogilvy, which was one of the nicer remarks.
“The short answer is it’s just not that enjoyable to play,” said Geoff Ogilvy, who is at 3 over. “Look, if your mission is to really punish a slightly bad shot and make it really hard all day, then it’s a success. If your mission is to create a place people enjoy playing, then it’s a failure.”
Steve Elling with the real surprise, the normally diplomatic Stewart Cink and his brutal criticism of the place.
"I am going to echo what Zach Johnson told me," Cink said after his round on Friday. "He said that on a scale of one to 10, this course is a minus 3."
Cink, a former member of the tour's Policy Board, is about the last guy anybody would expect to toss Molotov cocktails without good reason. There's the rub -- he has good reason.
One by one, players have been filing off at the BMW Championship this week and biting their tongues about the condition and design of the course, which was renovated before the 2009 event. Some have been less successful than others.
Jones stretched the course to 7,616 yards, fiddled with the bunkering and rebuilt all 18 greens with a state-of-the-art SubAir system, which helps drain water and oxygenate the greens. Still, because the greens are new and the Chicago area has been hammered by heavy rains and an unusually hot summer, the putting surfaces were a nightmare when the tour showed up to prep the course.
Said one PGA Tour employee, unprompted: "When I got here and saw the greens, I wanted to turn back around and go home."
I've never seen a player use the wreck word...
"It's too hard for the average player," Cink said, again parroting a statement he said he heard from another pro. "And anybody good enough to play it knows what a wreck it is."
Coming from a cerebral, articulate guy like Cink, that's like hearing Buddha ripping white rice.
And there was this about the architect in question's real desire for the redo:
Frank Jemsek, the club's amiable, 69-year-old owner, fielded questions Friday about the caustic feedback the course has absorbed and noted that Jones intended the bunkers to be even more punitive than how they turned out in the final product.
"I wanted people who are arthritic to be able to handle it," Jemsek said.
Well, one arthritis sufferer has weighed in.
"I just don't think I'm good enough to play this golf course," Phil Mickelson said.
Mickelson, who has never been a fan of Jones' work to say the least, chose his words carefully after the round when the controversial re-do was broached.
"Well, that's kind of lobbing one up there," Mickelson said. "There's been some interesting things being said in the locker room, and I think that the owner here, Joe Jemsek, is such a great guy, and he's done so much for golf, and I think we were all hoping that this would really turn out well and that we could bring a U.S. Open here.
"I just feel bad for him."
Joe Jemsek is actually Frank's late father, but Mickelson and his mates were on a roll.
"The course is length on top of length on top of length," Cink said.