Geoff ... after watching the US Open on TV, and seeing many short missed putts I concluded that this dubious display was due to (a) competitive stress, (b) vagaries of the grass and ground at Winged Foot, (c) putting form and poor judgement. The result was a plethora of misses from within 5 feet and many 3 putts.
What is your assessment of the putting displayed at the US Open ..??
If the World's best golfers have difficulty with poa annua grass and undulating greens, what chance do us average golfers have considering that we don't practice putting daily ....??
Here is the best comment on the Winged Foot greens:
"How good those chances are depend not only on putting, but on placement of approaches. Winged FootÕs small, push-up greens are the most turbulent surfaces in championship golf, more oppressive than Oakland Hills, Oakmont (site of the 2007 Open) or even Augusta National Golf Club.
Shaun Micheel, who won the 2003 PGA Championship at Oak Hill Country Club, in Rochester, N.Y., said Winged FootÕs severe greens require players to alter their pre-programmed strategy on approaches.
ÒThe barometer for us (on TOUR courses) is distance control and being able to get the ball pin high, but out here you donÕt necessarily want to be pin high because of the slopes,Ó Micheel said. ÒYou might be looking at some really hard-breaking putts. ItÕs better just to aim below the hole all the time, because those will more than likely give you the straightest putts.Ó
But even the straightest putts will have some ÒwiggleÓ in them, as Jim Furyk, the Õ03 U.S. Open champion points out. ThatÕs because the greens are covered in poa annua, which can be a fast surface, but also an unpredictable one, growing haphazardly as it does and potentially complicating even the shortest putts.
ÒItÕs not the kind of grass, poa annua, where you get the smoothest roll; itÕs hard to keep a putt on line, especially downhill,Ó Goosen said."
See GolfWeb.com. This is obviously a recipe for missed short putts and three-putting.
Here is the aftermath commentary by the setup gurus at USGA:
"In John Garrity's "Rough Justice" story (SI subscription required) that recaps the setup, he talks to "Open Doctor" Rees Jones, who apparently never found time to explain to Garrity that he is not the doctor of Winged Foot!
"The pros miss their shots right or left, not short or long," golf architect Rees Jones told me during the third round, "and this is one of the hardest courses in the world to recover from the sides." Jones, who stretched the A.W. Tillinghast-designed West course by 300 yards in preparation for this year's Open, laughed when I asked if he wanted credit for some of the hard-to-reach hole locations. "This may be one of the few courses where hole locations don't matter," he responded. "You could put the hole in the middle of the green, and the players still couldn't get close."
That must be news to Tom Fazio! Or wait, Tom Marzolf, the real visionary behind the doctoring.
The golfers must have understood that, because there wasn't a lot of grousing at Winged Foot. "There's been some conversation about greens being a bit bumpy," USGA president Walter Driver acknowledged during a Wednesday-morning press conference.
A bit!
"These are poa annua greens, and given the weather and the softness, that's not to be unexpected." Television closeups showed fast-moving putts bouncing and slow-moving putts zigging when you expected them to zag. Woods called the greens "slow and bumpy." Darren Clarke, when asked if they were the worst major-championship greens he had ever encountered, said, "Yes, comfortably."
And...
That was music to the ears of Davis, Jones and Greytok. The USGA man, the course doctor and the greenkeeper spent most of Sunday watching their greens bake in 90¡ heat, but the poa putting surfaces -- though brown and crusty in spots -- held up. It was the golfers who wilted."
"Q. A couple of guys have talked about the grass on the greens and how even a two- or three-foot putt really was at the mercy of the grass. How difficult was it coming in to concentrate on any lines when you know it's going to wiggle?
JIM FURYK: It's wiggly, and you have to just get out there and hit as best a putt you can and hit it solid and hope it works out. If your putting is a touch off and you get on greens where the ball is going to wiggle, it'll play with you pretty good.
I really felt like I stroked the ball well this week, felt like I hit a lot of good putts. I kind of could tell whether it was me or whether it was wiggling, but if you're just a little off, sometimes you start doubting, did I push it, I don't know. It's difficult conditions out there."
He also said that the slowness of the greens had a tendency to fool the better putters a bit, as they are so tuned to distance control on better, faster greens that they left a few short. See Furyk Interview.
As to whether amateur golfers "have a chance," the perspective is that PGA Tour players are somewhat spoiled by exceptionally "true" greens usually running at a uniform speed. Poa annua greens are not especially "true" greens, as they grow in a way during the day that renders them bumpy and a bit unpredictable. The truth is that so-so putting amateurs are probably less affected by bumpy greens than Tour pros, and so suffer less detriment in their putting results from the quality of the green. In fact, they probably handle the junk better because the amateurs are more used to handling junk greens. If pros putted on junk greens a lot, they most likely would have putted better than they did at Winged Foot.
Cheers!
Geoff Mangum
Putting Coach and Theorist
PuttingZone http://puttingzone.com
Golf's most advanced putting instruction -- you're either in the PuttingZone, or not.
