Chambers Bay: Flexible Setup, Basement Bunker & That Tree

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It's impossible not to walk around Chambers Bay in awe of the setting, vision and potential of the place. I'll do some more posts early this week with images, but my initial impression was extremely favorable. This will be a U.S. Open unlike anything you've ever seen and on a magnitude level that may shock the system. The course is already on edge, so setup will need to be very carefully considered.

Before we get to some of the details, several of the elements that make Chambers Bay an intriguing venue have been well covered and serve as a nice way to kick off the week. For those who missed it, the State of the Game podcast featuring Jay Blasi, on-site architect for Robert Trent Jones Jr., has been getting good reviews. You can check it out here.

There is a Seattle Times three-dimensional tour of the course with elevations provided by the Jones team. The hole details aren't great but the 3D idea and insights from Chambers Bay caddie Dustin da Silva might be helpful to get a sense of the place (thanks reader Larry for sending along).

Doug Ferguson sets the table for what we'll see, including the much talked about but ultimately inconsequential changing of par at the 1st and 18th holes on select championship days.

The par 70, but even that is different. The USGA plans to move the tees and alternate par between 4 and 5 on the first and 18th holes. And there's a par 3 (No. 9) that has two sets of tees — one that makes it play slightly uphill, the other has a 100-foot drop to the green.

Players already are suspicious, especially after USGA executive director Mike Davis said that anyone who plays only two practice rounds and has his caddie walk the course to get the yardage off the tee and to the green is "done."

It's not clear if the USGA is trying to identify the best player or the best student of architecture.

Ron Whitten in the June Golf Digest lists some of the key elements of the course and its creation, including a declaration that this is the first course designed specifically with the U.S. Open in mind.

Gregg Bell of the News Tribune adds this on the par changing and more in a comprehensive course preview that also credits RTJ Jr. with adding the 18th hole's deep fairway bunker. Though I was under the impression it was envisioned by Mike Davis.

One of the first hole’s two tee boxes for the U.S. Open is in front of the caddy’s shack down the hill from the clubhouse. That’s for when it is a par 4. On days the USGA makes No. 1 a par 5, the tee box in use will be 100 yards back from that.

Davis is curious to see how all the tinkering will play out this week.

“Honestly, there are some things I am still not sure about,” he said. “We put in new tee at 14 after the U.S. Amateur because too many players compromised that corner going down the left, and did not have problem flying over left side. Bob Jones’ bunker in middle did not come in play.”

For more variety than merely changing tee boxes on 18, Chambers Bay designer Robert Trent Jones Jr. added a pot bunker astride the fairway. It’s specifically for days at the U.S. Open the hole will be a par 5. Finished at Davis’ direction in 2012, it is a 12-foot-deep sand abyss about 120 yards in front of No. 18’s green.

It’s so steep it has stairs to access the back of it, for those unlucky enough to find it with a shot — or three. Caddies have nicknamed it “Chambers’ Basement.”

“It will be a talking point,” Jones said.

Golfweek's Bradley Klein and Martin Kaufmann engage in a very strong (and opionionated!) back-and-forth about the merits of Chambers Bay. Klein here, Kaufmann here.

In the New York Times Bill Pennington tells the backstory of the lone tree in the aftermath of an attempt on its life.

Chambers Bay instead turned to Neal Wolbert of Wolbert’s Plant Essentials, a tree-service and landscaping business in Olympia, Wash.

Wolbert said he could save the tree, and he instituted a treatment program that included a handmade epoxy that filled the gap in the damaged trunk. Iron bars were affixed to the bark to strengthen the area, and the tree was fortified with compost and nutrient treatments. Excess soil was removed from the root system, and over the next few years the tree was treated with fertilizers and summer irrigation.

“In three years’ time, it looked like a different tree,” said Wolbert, who donated his time rehabilitating the tree.

The tree has filled out, and new limbs have sprouted with lush growth.

“Even before the attack, it was clear that maybe the tree wasn’t going to last long term,” said Blasi, who now owns a design firm. “The hacking saved the tree, which is kind of poetic.”

In 2010, Blasi used the tree as the backdrop to his wedding ceremony near the 15th green.

Todd Milles on the saga that was trying to grow fescue grass in the northwest and how everyone loves it. We'll see.

Alex Myers talks to a few of the players who teed up in the 2010 U.S. Amateur and does some handicapping, as did I for GolfDigest.com based in part on recent play and experience from that amateur.

The forecast is for warmer than normal temperatures and plenty of sun, reports Adam Lynn. Locals say June has already been great for drying things out. The question will be, have things been dried out too much?