Can a short hitter win the U.S. Open?
Corey Pavin won the 1995 U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills on guile and shortgame mastery, famously hitting a 4wood safely onto the green on the 72nd hole to ensure victory.
A golfer still needs guile and a great short game to win the U.S. Open. But the game has changed so much in the nearly quarter-century since Pavin’s careerdefining moment that a player with his limited power now stands little chance of winning our national championship.
For one thing, Shinnecock Hills measured 6,996 yards when Pavin won. This week, when the U.S. Open returns to the historic course on Long Island, Shinnecock will measure a beefed-up 7,440 yards.
And when was the last time a touring pro hit a 4-wood into the green on a par-4 hole? They don’t even hit fairway woods into par-5s. In his prime, the 5foot-9 Pavin weighed 155 pounds with a pocketful of Titleists. Today’s top players look like they could play safety in the NFL.
Brooks Koepka shredded Erin Hills with his driver in winning the 2017 U.S. Open at 16-under par and Dustin Johnson, another bomber, won at Oakmont in ’16. Justin Thomas, pound for pound the biggest masher in the game, is the defending PGA champion.
Other major championship winners in the last five years include Rory McIlroy, Bubba Watson, Jason Day, Justin Rose, Jimmy Walker, Phil Mickelson, Patrick Reed and Sergio Garcia, all of whom regularly crank out 320-yard drives. Jordan Spieth? Sneaky long, with a 297.7-yard driving average.
There have been a couple exceptions. Most notably, Zach Johnson, who ranks 154th on the tour in driving distance, won the 2015 British Open at St. Andrews and relied on his superb wedge game and putting to win the 2007 Masters at bomber-friendly Augusta National.
“Oh, sure, absolutely,” Pavin said when asked if a short hitter could still win the U.S. Open. “I think the U.S. Open is the easiest tournament to win for a short hitter when the rough is long and the fairways are tight.”
But therein lies the rub. More and more, the bomb-and-gouge game prevalent on a week-to-week basis on the PGA Tour is being rewarded in the majors.
In the case of the U.S. Open, the way the United States Golf Association sets up the course has changed dramatically in recent years. Under the leadership of executive director Mike Davis, the USGA has gotten away from thick, ankledeep rough immediately outside the fairways and around the greens.
The USGA’s philosophy is that type of set-up limits creativity because there’s only one type of shot to play from deep, penal rough. U.S. Open set-ups now feature graduated rough, with the grass getting progressively deeper the farther a golfer strays from the fairway, and closely mowed green surrounds that force him to consider a variety of shot options.
Also, the USGA has widened fairways to encourage players to hit more drivers off the tee. U.S. Open fairways are not and never will be as wide as runways, but they’re also not the bowling alley strips of yesteryear. Some critics said the fairways at Erin Hills were too generous, though the USGA was counting on wind that never blew.
“With all the changes and the way the game is played today, I don’t know if that necessarily worked very well at Chambers Bay (in 2015) and Erin Hills,” said 1997 British Open champion Justin Leonard.
In the case of Shinnecock Hills, the fairways average 41 yards in width, Davis said, about a 15-yard increase over the average width in 2004, when Retief Goosen won there.
“So this is a wider U.S. Open,” Davis said. “But we think it’s appropriate. It allows the best players in the world to use angles and it brings (fairway) bunkers into play and I think when you look at it aesthetically, it by and large makes good sense.”
Unprecedented length – Erin Hills and Chambers Bay both topped out at more than 7,700 yards – combined with wider fairways and graduated rough plays into the hands of power players,
provided they’re not spectacularly wild.
“(The USGA) has sort of changed the concept of testing you through the bag,” said Golf Channel analyst Brandel Chamblee. “They’re letting you get away with inaccurate drives to some extent off the tee, owing to the inaccuracy of a lot of today’s best players.”
There’s more to it than just pounding drives, of course. At Shinnecock Hills, golfers are faced with ever-present wind and a devilish set of greens. But bunters such as Pavin or Jim Furyk, who won the 2003 U.S. Open at Olympia Fields, must do everything else almost flawlessly to have a chance.
“A guy like Jim Furyk is what the U.S. Open used to be about,” Chamblee said. “He was kind of like this generation’s Hale Irwin. And when they graduate the rough, the chances of a short and straight hitter prevailing become mitigated.”
Short-game guru Dave Pelz, who coaches Mickelson and Reed, said a distance-challenged golfer could win at Shinnecock only if he hit a high percentage of fairways and greens.
“I think Corey is right only in one sense,” Pelz said. “If a short hitter can get it somewhere on the green, then he can do it if he can two-putt from longer distances and make a few short ones. But he will have a tremendous disadvantage. On the other hand, the long hitter still has to hit it in the fairways.”
In 1995, the year Pavin won the U.S. Open, John Daly led the tour in driving distance with a 289-yard average. This year, 50 players are averaging 300 or more yards off the tee. More than likely, one of them will be holding the U.S. Open trophy next Sunday.