SECRET CHAMBERS
THE U.S OPEN VENTURES TO AMERICA’S PACIFIC NORTHWEST FOR THE FIRST TIME IN ITS 120-YEAR HISTORY AND IT WILL BE A MAJOR CHAMPIONSHIP BAPTISM OF FIRE FOR THE HOST COURSE, CHAMBERS BAY.
The year’s second major promises to be one of the most colourful and intriguing in modern US Open history as the USGA takes its agship championship to the youthful Chambers Bay links, outside Seattle, Washington.
Since the announcement was made in 2008 that the then-one-year-old layout would host the national championship, the local and state community have responded with great excitement and a collective sense of purpose to ensure preparations gathered momentum.
With this being the rst US Open to be played in the Pacific Northwest since the championship’s inception in 1895, people have come out of the woodwork to offer their services in volunteer roles in unprecedented numbers.
When tickets for the championship rounds (June 18 to 21) went on sale, they sold out in record time.
I contacted a colleague from the Seattle area in early 2014 while fleshing out my own plans to attend the event and he didn’t mince words. Regarding accommodation options, his advice was blunt and to the point: “Get in quick, they’re starting to book out already.”
The Seattle region has already seen major action, with the PGA Championship being played at Sahalee Country Club in 1998 (won by Vijay Singh) and a World Golf Championship at the same course in 2002, when our own Craig Parry was victorious. However, nothing quite compares with the enormity of a US Open.
For those still unfamiliar with Chambers Bay but who may associate golf in the region with their recollections of the forests of cedar and r that greeted players at Sahalee, they will be in for a shock as the contrast between the two styles of golf courses could not be more stark.
Never has there been a US Open played at a golf course that remotely resembles anything like Chambers Bay.
Designed from the remnants of a former gravel and sand mine on the shores of Puget Sound at University Place, south of Tacoma, the site at Chambers Bay is immense, almost a thousand acres, which dwarfs Oakmont, host of next year’s US Open, at 218 acres. Then there is the stark difference to the heavily-wooded Sahalee and other courses in the area … it is completely treeless – with one exception.
“This is a bold site, it’s a big site,” says Mike Davis, the USGA’s executive director. “There’s a lot of scale to this site.”
This once disused piece of land has been transformed by Robert Trent Jones II to take full advantage of its gorgeous outlook over Puget Sound and the Olympic Mountains to the west. Come US Open week, the links-like design, towering dunes and spectacular views that have been enjoyed by the public since the course opened in 2007 will certainly capture the attention of the world.
“I’ve heard people say it’s a ‘wow’ site,” Davis says, “but you think from an architectural standpoint, it’s bold architecture. And I say that because some of the greens have a lot of undulation, relative to other places we take a US Open.
“The routing itself is very interesting on this
property. If you really study it, on the front nine, twice you climb the hill and you come back down and then on the back nine you traverse your way up the hill and come back down one time.
“We don’t play a golf course for a US Open that even comes close to the elevation changes you have here at Chambers Bay. There are places out on the golf course where you’ve got blind shots, semi-blind shots, which in and of itself is a very interesting thing. Makes you feel like you’re ‘across the pond’ in one of the great links courses.”
One of the many unique features of Chambers Bay is the turf choice. The surfaces are entirely ne fescue from tee through green, ensuring that in all likelihood championship contestants will be faced with fast, bouncy conditions more prevalent to the links courses of the United Kingdom. In Australia, Barnbougle Dunes in Tasmania features fescue throughout.
“This course will positively play rm and fast. Even if we get some rain, this is built on all sand, which is a great ... medium to allow for good drainage,” Davis said.
“(Fine fescue) is a thin blade of grass. Where a lot of other grasses will kind of grab it, fescue, it skids. And what that means is, when you’re playing golf, you’ve got to think about what happens when your ball hits, where it’s going to bounce to and roll to. So it’s a fascinating grass on which to play.
“If it’s rm and fast and then you add slopes and undulations, from a player’s standpoint you really have to think your way around this golf course.”
Additionally, the width on offer from the tee and into the greens at Chambers Bay is unique in American championship golf. On that front, there are clear similarities with many British links layouts, but for a US Open? This is virgin territory.
“This is a very wide golf course. Easily, easily the widest golf course we have ever played a US Open on,” Davis said. “I look at the 13th hole and that is 105 yards wide. To give you an idea, just to put it in perspective, when we go to Winged Foot or Oakmont, fairways there may be 24 to 30, 32 yards wide.”
Amid the grand scale, Chambers Bay will showcase some quirky elements that add an element of charm to the experience. The working railway that runs alongside the course on the fringe of Puget Sound will continue to be just that during US Open week: working.
Manya a freight train will lumber along in the background and many a photo will be taken of the lone tree on the property, a Douglas r by the 16th tee, which could by week’s end rival the notoriety of the Lone Cypress on the Monterey Peninsula or Ike’s Tree that used to grace Augusta National.
Ruins from the site’s mining heritage have been preserved throughout the golf course and should the USGA choose to do so, there is scope for tee markers to be placed in different locations on every single day, including the oddity of sloped teeing areas potentially being used on some holes.
Davis refers to this unprecedented option as “interesting”, although there are sure to be mixed schools of thoughts from players and critics for whom at teeing grounds have been an absolute given in golf course design.
“There may be some where we give the players a little downhill slope, a little uphill slope, a side slope,” Davis said, cofirming only that it’s an option at this stage.
Of all Davis’ remarks about Chambers Bay and the US Open preparations, the concept of placing tee markers on slopes drew the most conjecture from players and critics when the story came to light. Whether sloped teeing grounds are used or not during the Open, the one thing the players can take some solace from is that the USGA learned much about Chambers Bay and its nuances from the staging of the US Amateur Championship at the course in 2010. The USGA made adjustments to the set-up as the week progressed through the stroke and match play formats and Davis noted the golf course was playing “beautifully” by the end.
“We ended up having No.1 playing No.2 in the nal match. That just goes to show you, it brought out the very best in those players,” Davis noted.
Those lessons learned have been critical in the USGA’s preparations for the 2015 US Open, although Davis acknowledged that he expects, just like every other year, player feedback on the course set-up will be diverse. When it comes to the US Open, it always is.
“I think exactly the same as we would say every year in that some of the players will absolutely embrace the architecture and embrace the golf course set-up. They will focus really on learning it. Others will chirp,” Davis said.
“Arguably the best US Open player of all time, Jack Nicklaus, he used to love that when he would walk in and hear certain players chirping, he would
We don’t play a golf course for a US Open that even comes close to the elevation changes you have here. – Mike Davis, USGA
say, ‘OK, that player’s gone, I don’t have to worry about him. That player’s gone.’
“I really do think that there’s something to that. Moving the National Open championship around to different courses gives you different architecture, the different courses for different horses, and I think those that not only embrace the architecture and the golf course set-up, but really spend the time here at Chambers Bay learning the nuances are going to have a successful time.”
That Chambers Bay will be sight unseen for all but a handful of players adds to the intrigue. Which ‘horse’ will ultimately be best suited to this course, so to speak?
Defending champion Martin Kaymer unleashed the potent combination of great ball-striking, clear-headed course management and an almost exclusive reliance on putting from short to vast distances off the turtle-back putting surfaces at Pine-hust No.2 last year.
His eight-stroke margin of victory would point to a blueprint for others to follow and the vast, undulating putting surfaces and green surrounds at Chambers Bay, with tight fescue surfaces demanding precise chipping, awould suggest a similar strategy could also yield great results this year.
Using great imagination to successful plot advantageous lines from the tee to capitalise on the best angles into pin locations will be a definite key to contending. The wide fairways may look inviting but there are always more optimal routes to identify to unlock the best scoring options.
Patience, as always, is a critical ‘15th club’ in the bag at any US Open, but combine Chambers Bay’s variable winds, uneven lies, undulation, sand, rough and fast playing surfaces where the ball is allowed to run and the 2015 champion will have demonstrated not only a mastery of every shot in the bag, but ice in his veins.
The hottest man in golf at present has been demonstrating that these attributes have been ring on all cylinders for at least the past six months. Jordan Spieth has elevated his game to such a level, culminating in a Masters green jacket in April, that he appears destined to thrive anywhere he tees it up right now.
It matters little that Spieth’s caddie Michael Greller is a local boy from University Place and knows Chambers Bay like the back of his hand.You
sense that physically and mentally, Spieth will nd a way to position himself to make a run at the title regardless of a familiarity or otherwise with the layout.
Coming off runner-up nishes in consecutive majors, Phil Mickelson’s major stocks are riding high ahead of his 25th US Open appearance as he bids for that elusive home Open title and a career Grand Slam that would accompany it. Chambers Bay, with its width from the tee and requiring the kind of fertile, creative mind that Mickelson possesses to complement his shot-making and short game skills, could be just the layout he ‘needs’ to nally break through.
There are many players in possession of the skill sets and experience to be crowned US Open champion but Davis was more adamant in his assessment of what it would take to win at this layout. He suggested that if players didn’t book in scouting trips to Seattle in the months leading to this month’s championship, then they could look ahead to Oakmont next year.
“I would contend that there is no way, no way, a player would have success here at Chambers Bay unless he really studies the golf course and learns it.” Davis said. “The idea of coming in and playing two practice rounds and having your caddie just walk it and using your yardage book, that person’s done. Will not win the US Open.”
Davis’ prophecy will be proven right or wrong as the Pacific Northwest prepares to showcase its great golf and beauty to the world.
A one-dimensional player won’t do well around here ... a multidimensional player who can see it and execute the shots he needs to … also a player who can visualise what a ball is going to do rolling out. – Greg Norman, who will make his TV commentator debut at the US Open