Day 3 Chintz: 18th Green Noticeably Slower

Muirfield is a wonderful golf course, the setup is largely excellent, but for some reason the R&A has unnecessarily risked their credibility three days in a row with course preparation touches that do nothing to enhance the championship.

- Thursday, the 8th and 18th hole locations were unnecessarily extreme and had the breezes been wind, play probably would have been stopped at some point because balls would not stay around the hole.

- Friday, 15th hole, see above statement.

- Saturday, the 15th was again borderline. Phil Mickelson:

If you manage your game well, I thought you could make pars, and an occasional birdie here and there. 15 is the only marginal one, 15 is marginal again. For whatever reason, they are struggling keeping that green manageable.

And weirdest of all, the 18th green was noticeably slower. Henrik Stenson: 

Yeah, gosh, the one on 18 was ridiculously slow. I hit that one in practice and it was kind of hard to get it up to the top of the crest, before it started going down, and even though I knew it was a slow putt, I still -- I hit it and I thought I did my best, and I got it up over, and it just completely hit the breaks and the downslope. So I didn't think I did a bad first effort, and still left me a nasty six-footer coming down that I missed. That was probably one of the most sour ones. Because I got it up in decent position on 18.

Players noted several hole locations on knobs or sideslopes Saturday. Tiger Woods:

They're putting it on sides of slopes. It's really hard to make birdies, it's hard to get the ball close. We'll see what they do tomorrow.

The R&A certainly can set the course up as they please and most won't care. But considering they claim to not care about the winning score, it's hard to understand why there are so many anti-birdie hole locations which, with an increase in the wind, could cause Shinnecock Hills play stoppage.