Golf's Major Championships

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This is for those of you who chalked-up Billy Horschel's rant relative to course conditions to some horseshit about mediocre players making excuses, the cream rises to the top, etc., etc:


'Most players are too afraid to say what they think' - Lee Westwood slams US Open set up

Published
21/06/2015 | 12:50
Nine-time major winner Gary Player labelled this week's US Open the "most unpleasant" tournament he has ever seen as criticism of Chambers Bay intensified on Saturday.

Masters champion and halfway joint leader Jordan Spieth called the 18th "unbelievably stupid" when played as a par four and Henrik Stenson compared the greens to "putting on broccoli" - a point he illustrated in typical fashion with a picture on Twitter suggesting he was having broccoli for lunch.

World number one Rory McIlroy joked the putting surfaces were not green enough to be broccoli - "They are more like cauliflower" - and said he was delighted to have already secured one US Open title.

"Every year the US Open is very frustrating, apart from 2011," said McIlroy, who won by eight shots at Congressional four years ago. "I came off the green on the last there and I said to JP (Fitzgerald, his caddie), 'Thank God I've got one of these'.

"I'm glad my name is on the trophy at least once and I'll try to make it twice at some point."

Ryder Cup team-mate Lee Westwood said most players were "too afraid" to say what they thought about the course in public, but on the 50th anniversary of his sole US Open victory at Bellerive, Player was not so reticent and laid the blame at the door of course designer Robert Trent Jones Jr.

"We're playing the US Open, this great championship... but this has been the most unpleasant golf tournament I've seen in my life," Player, 79, told Golf Channel. "The man who designed this golf course had to have one leg shorter than the other.

"It is hard to believe that a man can miss the green by one yard and the ball ends up 50 yards down in the rough. This is a public course where we are trying to encourage people to come and play and get more playing the game. They are having a putt from 20 feet and they are allowing 20 feet right and 20 feet left.

"You don't bring the US Open to golf courses like this. This is devastating. To see a man miss the green by one yard and end up 50 yards down there, caddies falling and hurting their ankles and knees, players falling... this is terrible.

"You have got to give the architect the blame. It's impossible to play these golf courses. Did you see how these pros were three putting one after the other? Sergio (Garcia) three-putted the 18th to make the cut.

"I tell you, there have never been so many people to miss the cut that are so happy to go home."

In response, Jay Blasi - one of the design team behind Chambers Bay - wrote on Twitter: "Greatly respect @garyplayer and agree with many of his goals for golf but he is uninformed as it relates to @ChambersBayGolf #studyfirst."

Westwood, who carded a triple-bogey seven on the 18th on Friday, said his main criticism was the altering of par on the first and 18th, adding on Sky Sports 4: "I don't see the reason for jiggling it around. This is the first time I have ever known them change par fours into par fives.

"The 18th is a great par five and the first is a great par four, so today's set-up is how the golf course should be played.

"Most players are too afraid to say what they think. We are living in a PC (politically correct) world and you can't possess an opinion, but if you put a camera in the locker room you would hear a few things you are not hearing in public."

Speaking after a third round of 69, Ian Poulter added: "You can't say what you would really like to say because there's just no benefit in that. It's hard to express yourself."

I love how people criticise the pros for saying what they think. We should all just stand there and dribble out the PC BS.
— Lee Westwood (@WestwoodLee) June 20, 2015

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One more thing about the greens at Chambers Bay: They may have had an effect on putting


By Mike Stachura

The statistical evidence is clear: Chambers Bay produced some of the worst putting averages in recorded U.S. Open history.

First, let’s look at the granddaddy of putting statistics, putts per green in regulation. Generally, when tour players hit a green in regulation they take less than two putts most of the time. Certainly at a U.S. Open where the greens are fast and difficult that tendency to take less than two putts is a little less, but still more than 50 percent of the time. To give you some perspective, the full-season average on the PGA Tour last year for putts per green in regulation was 1.781, which is about what it’s been since it was first tracked in 1986. At U.S. Opens it gets a little worse, of course. For the last 20 years prior to Chambers Bay, the average was 1.877. This year, the putting average was 1.923. That’s the third highest that number has been in history. Only Oakmont in 2007 (1.933) and Oakland Hills in 1996 (1.943) were worse. But these differences (less than .05 of a stroke) seem small enough to not make us worry too much.

The case for Chambers Bay’s problematic greens gets a little cloudy when you look at a stat like "birdie or better percentage-putting." This number tracks how often a player makes birdie or better after hitting a green in regulation. The average last week was a birdie per green in regulation 22.4 percent of the time. That beats the 20-year average for U.S. Opens (21.3), and is better than 12 of the last 14 U.S. Opens. It almost seems respectable compared to the tour average, which generally is about 28 percent of the time.

But there are two alarming stats where the antics of Billy Horschel start to seem at least understandable: one-putt percentage and three-putt percentage. One can theorize that on superb greens, players will one-putt fairly conssitently, and at the same time, it’s conceivable that on non-bumpy putting surfaces, three-putts will be less likely. At Chambers Bay, those two stats were historically bad.

The percentage of one-putts at U.S. Opens over the previous 20 years has been slightly better than a third of the greens (34.94 percent of the time). At Chambers Bay, players one-putt barely a quarter of the holes (26.27 percent). It was the worst one-putt percentage since the stat’s been kept. For any event.

Finally, and most tellingly perhaps, comes three-putt percentage. As a means of comparison, the tour average for the year generally hovers around 3.00, and, of course, U.S. Opens are more difficult. But at Chambers Bay a player three-putted a relatively absurd 8.58 percent of the time. The average for U.S. Opens from 1997-2014 was 4.84. The only year that comes close to Chambers Bay’s number is Oakmont in 2007 at 7.22. Chambers Bay is more than three standard deviations worse than the U.S. Open average for the last two decades. That seems beyond an aberration.

Clearly, something abnormal was happening on the greens at Chambers Bay last week. Odds are, one way or another, it won’t happen again.
http://www.golfdigest.com/blogs/the-loop/2015/06/one-more-thing-about-the-green.html?mbid=social_twitter
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Want more?... listen to Gary Player's take: http://grandstanding.podbean.com/e/gs-026-gary-player/