The only real statement on the first day of the United States Openwas made by Mother Nature, as if the Black course itself wasn’t enough of an antagonist. How a golf course plays is highly dependent on the weather, so let’s take a look at what effect an inch of rain has on the game of golf, in addition to making everything wet and your grip slippery.
A very soft and wet course will have three main effects, two of which make play harder, and one which makes play easier: decrease driving distance, make the rough heavier, and slow the green speeds.
Fairways during the regular PGA Tour season are kept firm and fast, which makes drives longer, because drives roll out well beyond the actual carry distance, but also less accurate. The longer a player hits his drive the harder it is to keep it in the fairway. Drives on soft fairways will not roll out and will even plug in the mud, which drastically reduces length off the tee, effectively increasing the length of the course even though it makes fairways easier to hit.
If we compare PGA Tour driving distances with those from the first day of the United States Open, the rain effect is quite shocking: players hit their drives an average of 40 yards shorter than usual. That means the exhaustingly long Black course is playing 480 yards longer. It also means players are hitting 3-irons into greens instead of 6-irons, which in turn means more missed greens and more scrambling from the rough.
That brings us to the second effect rain has on an Open course: heavy rough. The rough at a United States Open is about four inches long, which is just about impossible to hit out of when wet with anything more than a short iron. Anyone who has ever tried to mow grass after a heavy rain knows the feeling: it’s like hitting through mashed potatoes.
If you miss the fairway, forget about your 3-iron and just wedge it back into play with what amounts to a penalty shot. Around the green the wet rough will make distance and spin control unpredictable, so players will be left with longer par putts, something they do not like because they compound the mental pressure, which is already cooking on high.
Justin Leonard talked about the challenge posed by the rain after he played at par through seven holes on Thursday.
“It was obviously very difficult out there,” he told reporters. “The golf course was playing even longer with the heavy rough and the rain. My goal was to forget about par and do the best I could.”
He added, “I was fortunate to hit a couple of good drives, but you have to avoid getting off the fairway because it is extremely wet and thick.”
The only positive effect that rain has on play is that moisture slows green speeds. Green speed is a function of how long and wet the grass is, so any kind of moisture — humidity, fog or rain — will slow things. The target green speed at the United States Open is 14 on the Stimpmeter, which is about 30 percent faster than regular tour speeds of 10.5.
Fast green speeds are difficult because approach shots do not hold the green as well and, while putting, aim and speed control are drastically different from what players are used to. For example, a 20-foot cross-hill putt that normally breaks two feet will now break three feet on fast greens, but you have to hit it half as hard. And a five-foot will break two inches more than they are used to, so expect a lot of misses on the bottom edge of the cup.
Faster green speeds also accentuate small features in the green that are not visible to the naked eye, so green reading is more difficult. With the amount of rain that fell on Thursday, green speeds were probably around 11, but nowhere near the target of 14, and also soft and receptive, so players were more in their comfort zone. We’ll see how much they dry out over the weekend, and if they dry out and get up to target speed, you’ll see a lot more missed three-footers than you are likely to see Friday, reminiscent of 2002.
0 comments:
Post a Comment