Formidable Pinehurst begins major double duty

PINEHURST, United States: Pinehurst made an impressive start Monday as the host course for two major championships in as many weeks with praise from players after practice for the 114th US Open.

The pine-laden layout, featuring sand and scrub brush beyond the fairways rather than the usual dense rough, will test the world’s top male players starting Thursday with the US Women’s Open following next week.

“We’re exactly where we want to be right now,” said US Golf Association executive director Mike Davis.

“We think we’ll have two magical weeks that have never been done before.”

Women have already expressed concern about rain delays or a possible 18- hole men’s playoff disrupting practice next Monday and possible divots, which Davis discounts saying landing areas will be different in the events on most holes.

“Sometimes you get a bad break. That’s golf,” Davis said.

“Dealing with those breaks is part of the examination.”

South African Ernie Els, the 1994 and 1997 US Open champion, praised the 2011 renovation by Ben Crenshaw and Bill Coore to bring back the natural landscape used in the original 1930s Donald Ross design.

“I love what Crenshaw and Coore have done here,” Els said.

“You have got options on this course, especially around the greens. This is the look that was originally here before everything got so manicured. I think we are in for a great championship.”

Australian Jason Day, the US Open runner-up in 2011 and 2013 and second at the 2011 Masters, stressed the importance of staying on the hard, fast fairways to best attack greens with small target areas and curves set to send balls rolling far from the cup.

“It’s a good risk-reward course,” Day said.

“You can hit driver and try to get closer to the greens, but that usually means driving into a narrower bottleneck where you might also end up in natural sandy areas. The only way to attack these greens is from the fairway.”

The 7,562-yard layout impressed 20-year- old US star Jordan Spieth, who shared second at the Masters and had never played Pinehurst before.

“The gol f course itsel f is incredible,” he said.

“I’ve never played anything like it. And it’s already, right now with pins in the middle of the greens, hard enough for even par to win.

“It’s really hard to hit the greens. You’ve got to launch the ball very high to hold the greens. Either that or you’ve got to land it short with a little lower shot to get it to run.

“It’s going to be extremely challenging but at the same time it’s going to be a fair test.”

Spieth said some balls that roll off the fairway might actually get rewarded with a packed sand lie while less fortunate ones are doomed to weeds and snarly grass as ruinous as the usual US Open dense rough.

“It’s going to be spotty, but you can get fortunate to where you actually hit less club off a pretty good lie than if you hit the fairway,” he said.

“You’regoingtoseesomerecovery shots that are phenomenal and you’re going to see some recovery shots that look like US Opens of the past, where the rough is four or five inches.” — AFP