What Awaits the Players at Pinehurst No 2 ?

Post by Sports Writer Derek Clements

When the world's best players turn up at Pinehurst No 2 for the US Open, those who have played there before may well wonder if they have taken a wrong turning somewhere along the road.

The statue of Payne Stewart remains, as do the famous (some would say infamous) turtle-back greens that will reduce many of their number to gibbering wrecks before the week is out. But what about the rough? Where has the rough gone?

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US Open venues are famous for two things after all - ultra-fast putting surfaces with pins placed in inaccessible spots and punishing rough. So where is the thick grass this year?

Many competitors were probably pretty happy when they heard that this famous old course was being revamped. But while most other courses have gone for extra length to make them more difficult, Pinehurst has gone back to where it all began in 1907. Yes, the rough has largely disappeared, but it has been replaced by what has been deemed as waste area.

Waste area, you may recall, cost Dustin Johnson the 2010 US PGA championship at Whistling Straits when he grounded his club on the 72nd hole and was later penalised two strokes because what he thought was just a piece of rough was, in fact, deemed to be a bunker, or a trampled sand trap, to be strictly accurate.

In 2004, Stuart Appleby suffered a similar fate on the same area of ground, after which notices were posted in the locker room warning of the unusual local conditions.

How many professionals actually paid any attention to those notices in 2010 is unclear, and you can be certain that many of them inadvertently broke the rules but got away with it because, unlike Johnson, they did not have TV cameras scrutinising their every move.

Johnson clearly didn't pay heed to the notices at Whistling Straits, but take it as read he won't make the same mistake at Pinehurst - and there is no excuse for anybody else falling foul of the rules either.

Matt Kuchar acknowledged the issues the players are likely to face.

“I haven’t heard exactly what it looks like,” he said. “But just speaking of sandy areas, how they’ll be played, whether or not we’ll have the PGA Championship at Whistling Straits issue or exactly how they’ll be played, if you can ground your club, remove things, I don’t know that just yet.”

Just 24 hours after finishing second to Rory McIlroy at the BMW PGA championship, Shane Lowry proved he was made of the right stuff by winning a 36-hole qualifier at Walton Heath. Playing six rounds of competitive golf in five days requires huge amounts of focus.

“I carried a lot of momentum in from Sunday [at Wentworth in the BMW PGA] to get the job done,” said Lowry. “I’m really looking forward to getting to Pinehurst. Majors are where I want to be playing.

“I was comfortable competing down the stretch with the likes of Thomas Bjorn, Rory McIlroy and Luke Donald, so I’ve got a lot of confidence and I’ll take that with me to Pinehurst.”

Fellow qualifier Marcel Siem is happy just to be able to experience a real-life Pinehurst having only previously seen in a virtual world. “It’s always been a dream of mine to play at Pinehurst - I’ve played it so many times on the PlayStation,” said the German.

This year the USGA has taken the unique step of hosting the men’s and women’s US Opens back-to-back on the same course in successive weeks.

There has been some concern expressed that the women will not find the course in its best condition after the men have departed.

But California’s Lucy Li won't care as she tees off as the youngest qualifier in history at the age of just 11.

Pinehurst can reduce even the most hardy of golfers to mere shadows of themselves so what it will do to a child is anyone’s guess with the notoriously tricky greens expected to run at between 11 and 12.5 on the stimpmeter as opposed to the upper limit of 10.5 on normal weeks.

On the Tuesday, the USGA will posthumously award Payne Stewart with the Bob Jones Award, given each year since 1955 in recognition of distinguished sportsmanship in golf. Just four months after winning the 1999 US Open at Pinehurst, and a month after helping the US win the Ryder Cup at the Country Club, Stewart died in a plane crash.

Derek Clements is a sports journalist with a particular passion for golf with over 12 years of experience covering golf and other sports including Chief Sub-Editor on the sports desk of The Sunday Times. To contact Derek email direct via [email protected]

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