re: Week 16 of 2014 Golf Thread:post Masters Edition

West bank can't contain us.

The visit was so cool. I got a ton of comments to post later.

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I got a ton of comments to post later.

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So two loops? Awesome.

I'll have plenty of ball powder. Hopefully the second loop will be somebody good.
Thursday, I go out with a 1:30 group.

Warning: Long post.

The USGA lead agronomist for the Southeast came and talked to our class today out at the Starkville Country Club. We were going to go around the course and do a typical site visit, but it was freezing and super windy so we stayed inside. He talked and had some Q&As.

He'll be the head honcho this year at Pinehurst No. 2 for both the US Opens (Men and Womens). So we spent a good amount of time talking about those logistics and how he thinks it will go. He basically said the USGA wanted to do it to try and bring more excitement and awareness for the Women's Open. He said they've gotten some push back from the women about divots, dead greens, rough, etc. He's excited for it, but he compared it to tornado chasers. You're excited, and then you get there and realize what you've just gotten into.

They are hoping that the women will be hitting the same clubs into the greens as men. So they don't think the landing areas will conflict too much, except on some holes where the men will be taking irons or hybrids off the tee. And they are not too concerned about divots around the green because they hope to be playing fast and firm, so a lot of bump and runs and putts from the approaches.

Pinehurst used to have bermuda rough, but now has sandy, naturalized wiregrass rough areas. So the women won't have to worry about taller rough than normal.

He said a Monday playoff wouldn't hurt the women's open as much as you'd think. He said they would send the women off for practice rounds on a split tee start around 7 a.m., and hope to get the playoff underway around 1 p.m. for the mens.

He said the USGA tries to make the courses play the same firmness and speed from the very first practice round on Monday to the final round on Sunday (or Monday). He said they don't try and dry out the course and make it firmer over the weekend. They want consistency throughout the week, but you can't always control what the weather does. He used players saying "Well, I'm sure they'll dry the course out and try and firm it up this weekend" as an example of what they try and not do.

He helped out at the Masters last week and had some interesting observations, but it was crazy how much information he was not privy to. He said he sat in the room during the discussion on green speed and they spoke as to not let others know what the actual stimpmeter reading was. He was saying they are very protective of their maintenance practices.

The superintendent at SCC used to intern and work at Augusta and he also had some interesting comments. Both of them said that you wouldn't pay 10 dollars to play Augusta in the middle of the summer. Bermuda is cut at 1 height throughout the course. At Augusta, bermuda is used simply as a base for overseeding ryegrass. They scalp the hell out of it in the fall before overseeding.

He had a lot of other comments that were interesting to me, but probably not to ya'll. I asked a ton of questions about the US Open and it's setup. Especially considering the thread last night/today about favorite US Open courses. He talked to me after I ate lunch with him and the professors about an internship with the USGA, which would be pretty awesome. I'm sure more comments will come back to me throughout the day.

You are inside the ropes watching professional world class golfers from 20 feet or so away...Couldn't be better..

And don't forget, deadlifting at the same time. Do they let ya burn out there?

Stenson fears no man.

I don't know if he mentioned any specific numbers. He spent a lot of time talking about measuring firmness with a "TruFirm" meter. That was his job at Augusta last week. And it's a relatively new tool, so he talked about how people can incorporate it at their courses.

If you're playing very firm, you wanna make sure your approaches are firm too so high handicaps can run the ball on the green if they can't stick the green.

Remember Jordan Spieth talking about how his ball hadn't checked all day, but it did on 8? He said that they had gone out and put water on 8 earlier in the day because they were worried it was too firm.