"It might well have been the firmest course in championship history, certainly American championship history."

Tony Dear follows up with Chambers Bay superintendent David Wienecke on the setup and conditions and gets some pretty frank answers. 

"We had a 4 to 6% moisture level in the turf, which is incredible when you consider the moisture level at Sahalee for the U.S. Senior Open was between 15 and 20%."

TruFirm readings (Trufirm is a device developed by the USGA that measures the firmness of a surface) got as low as 0.1" meaning pitch-mark repair tools were totally unnecessary, and Wienecke says he had to go 24" down into the soil to find any evidence of water.

But...

Even so, the 58-year-old veteran became apprehensive when Mike Davis, the USGA's Senior Director of Rules and Competitions, arrived at the course on the Tuesday preceding the event and instructed him to push it a little more. "When Mike told me not to water at all then I got a little concerned," Wienecke says. "The irrigation system had been turned off for nearly a week already at that point, but we had been hand-watering the greens. I was worried that drying them out any more might cause a problem. I thought the course might become unfair because good shots would not be rewarded, and I was worried we might lose some hole locations."

Man knows his course!

Indeed, on Monday afternoon during the first qualifying round, it became almost impossible for any shot to hold a green regardless of how well it had been struck. "I became a little anxious at about 2 o'clock in the afternoon," Davis said. "But by 4 p.m. the turf seemed to be retaining some moisture, so players could control the ball a little better."

On Tuesday evening, following the completion of 36-hole qualifying, the greens got a fairly generous dousing, but Wienecke and his crew still had to employ unconventional methods when cutting new holes. 'We watered the area around where the new hole was to be cut fairly heavily just to stop the ground from crumbling and breaking up," he says. "Then we filled the new hole with water."

Take that, R&A!

Kelly Donaldson, in charge of the turf at the Home Course, which hosted one of the stroke-play qualifying rounds over the first two days of the Amateur, visited Chambers Bay on Wednesday and couldn't believe what he saw. "Kelly took one look at it and just said, 'It's dead,' " says Wienecke. "But I told him to get down on his hands and knees and test it. Sure enough, he discovered the fescue had just gone dormant. Even that little bit of water we were giving the greens from Wednesday onwards was enough to stimulate growth. This grass is very hardy."