Going low in majors at all-time high
Record numbers are changing top players’ mentality
are driving the ball plays a big role in the scores. Johnson, McIlroy and Day all average more than 300 yards in driving. On the back nine at Baltusrol, the par-4 hole yardages are 460, 431, 451, 430 and 453. That puts a short club in their hands on every approach to the green.
“The guys are just younger and stronger and fitter and faster, and they are just long out there,” Day said. “So the competition is really, really tough right now.
“When I first came out in 2006,” he said, “I remember some of the cut lines were plus-1, plus-2, and now most of the cut lines are under par.”
There clearly has been a change in mentality of how much respect is afforded any golf course. For a player to simply go out and ease his way into a major, thinking par is a reasonable score early on, is to possibly get buried.
Day, the world’s top-ranked player, has shot these opening scores in the majors this year: 72, Masters (finished tied for 10th); 76, U.S. Open (T8); 73, British Open (T22).
“The bar’s been raised ever since Tiger Woods came around,” Day said. “I think every-
Baltusrol Golf Club was named after Baltus Roll, a farmer who owned the land where the club resides today. In 1831, Roll was murdered at 61, reportedly by two thieves who believed he had hidden a small treasure in his farmhouse.
Louis Keller, publisher of the New York Social Register, bought the land in the 1890s and announced he had built a golf course on the site. A nine-hole track opened in 1895 and eventually was expanded to 18 holes. Called the “Old Course,” it was replaced when the club hired architect A.W. Tillinghast to build two courses, the Lower and Upper. When both opened in 1922, Baltusrol was the first U.S. club to have two contiguous courses.
Fifteen USGA championships have been staged on the two courses. The Lower became the preferred layout, with Robert Trent Jones reworking it in 1948 and his son Rees doing work in advance of the 1993 U.S. Open.
The most significant change to the Lower Course since Phil Mickelson’s PGA Championship victory in 2005 is the pond on the left-side landing area on No. 18 has been enlarged and moved to make it more hazardous. Mickelson said this week that a 3-wood might be the play off the tee, in turn forcing a longer second shot for those who attempt to reach the par-5 in two.
Baltusrol’s Tudor Revival-style clubhouse is among the most iconic in America. The first clubhouse burned down in 1909.
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