While I was walking the back nine with Tommy Robinson during his practice round today at the U.S. Senior Open, officials with the USGA met the media to discuss preparations at Sahalee for this week's tournament.
As I read through the transcript of the affair, it caught me a little off guard exactly how forthcoming these officials were in discussing matters of course set-up. As recently as five years ago at events like the Senior Open, things like target green speeds and heights of cut in the rough were state secrets not meant for public consumption. Now, they're calling formal news conferences to announce those details to the media.
The other thing that struck me was how ofter Sahalee CGCS Rich Taylor's name was mentioned during the proceedings. By my count, there were seven specific mentions of Taylor, his crew, the volunteers and the work they're all doing this week. At one point, he was called "the most important person here this week" by USGA president Jim Hyler. Now, kudos for the superintendent aren't unusual; the superintendent has been routinely recognized at affairs such as the one that took place this morning. But the frequency with which Taylor was mentioned and praised does show just how much respect Taylor has earned after almost 30 years maintaining this layout, the last 11 as the head superintendent.
I've pulled some of the most interesting parts of this morning's USGA news conference — at least to those in the golf course management business — and posted them below. They are presented with limited introduction because they're pretty long as is; no need to make them much longer. If you crave more information from this news conference, then you can read the entire transcript right here.
USGA president Jim Hyler on golf and the environment:
But speaking from a broader perspective the golf industry is evolving at a faster pace than ever before and there are a number of new technologies and new practices that have been developed over the last few years that will help courses be more responsible and more sustainable in the years ahead.
To encourage such efforts we have recently posted to our website a newly developed list of questions for golf facilities to consider regarding best management practices for sustainability. The goal is to help courses assess their own situation and develop appropriate action plans to improve.
We actually start with the basics, asking, for example, whether a facility has a written set of maintenance standards or a written environmental plan. The goal is not to tell golf facilities what to do, each one is unique and they have their own local issues to think about and consider.
What we want to do is to get the discussion going; start to raise the awareness at golf courses and clubs as we need longterm process of continual progress and improvement that ultimately will benefit the environment as well as the game.
I encourage you to learn more about the USGA's work in this broad topic of environmental sustainability, information on our support of turf grass research and our focus on water protection and on water and energy conservation and it can be found at our website, USGA.org.
Tom O'Toole, chairman of the USGA's Championship Committee, on the golf course:
Let me conclude with a couple of comments about the golf course. First of all, the golf course superintendent, Rich Taylor, who happened to be the superintendent during the prior two Championships that Sahalee has hosted is a fabulous superintendent and has such a great attachment and knowledge of this golf course.
Between Rich and our USGA agronomy staff led by Larry Gilhuly and Bob Brame and Derf Soller, I think Jeff Hall will tell you, and his remarks will be specific in a moment. I think knocking on wood or keeping our fingers crossed we're delighted at where the golf course is right now today. That presentation of fairway and green firmness and green speeds and mowing heights could not have been achieved without the tireless effort of Rich Taylor and his staff and the many volunteers of golf course superintendents from all over the Northwest.
One of the main presentations and concepts that the USGA has adopted is to try to present the players with a Championship setup of the golf course during their practice rounds of what will be experienced during the Championship rounds. And, again, between Jeff's hard leadership and fabulous direction with Rich Taylor and our agronomy staff I think the golf course is presented to the players in that very manner in connection with that concept.
Jeff Hall, the USGA's managing director of rules and competitions, on green speeds at Sahalee:
With respect to the putting greens, our target green speed this week is between 12 and a half and 13 feet on the Stimpmeter. We believe at those speeds subtle contours of the putting green designs will be accentuated. When we are setting up the golf course we want those green speeds and the firmness to require excellent putting touch but also excellent touch around the greens when a player does miss the green in their recovery efforts. But we do not want to have the speed and firmness so fast or so firm that we sacrifice hole locations. In our analysis we feel this is the proper speed for Sahalee.
Hall with specifics on roughs:
What we call our intermediate cut of rough will be maintained at one and a quarter inches, it will be cut every day, it's approximately 6 feet wide, that's the rough that's immediately adjacent to the fairway. We also have a 4 foot wide, are for the intermediate around each putting green. Our first cut of primary rough will be maintained at two and a half inches, it will be cut every day.
It's approximately 8 feet wide along the fairways. Again another 4 foot width adjacent to the intermediate around the putting greens. There are four holes where we do not have the two and a half inch rough, Holes 1, 4, 14 and 16. They're the shorter holes here at Sahalee and if you miss those fairways you're going to be straightaway into our second cut of primary which we are maintaining at three and one quarter inch height and that's the balance of the grass out on the golf course that's being maintained at that height.
We're cutting that rough in the direction of the putting green. We've been very pleased as we've tossed golf balls out into that rough that it's playable but the golfers will not have complete control of their golf ball. Couple that with the firm conditions around the greens and the approaches, the guys will have a chance when they're in that rough to make a shot and, again, we will have the opportunity for them to present their skill. We'll see their skill levels come out in making those strokes should they miss the fairway.
We don't really want the lie of the golf ball to dictate a pitch out. Now if they get behind a tree that's different. That leads to the third cut of primary that we have out there, it's anywhere from 75 to 100 foot in height, comes in the form of cedars and fir trees, obviously a key element to Sahalee, the trees that line the fairways. When we analyze our set up, we opted to bring that rough cut down, we want to get it firm, we want to encourage golf balls to get out into the rough in and under and around the trees but yet maintain a height that will give players an opportunity to make a recovery shot.
Around the putting greens, we started with a rough height of three and a half inches, last night we actually brought that cut down to three and a quarter and we looked at this morning during setup, we're going to discuss it further. We may very well bring that down another quarter of an inch.
We started to see golf balls getting out into that rough during practice rounds, where perhaps the skill level of the players in the Championship was not being reflected in the result of the shot.
Really, we want to make sure the setup is such that the players out there have a better chance of getting it up and down than any of us. By bringing that height of cut down their skill will be accentuated and shown off appropriately, so we will keep an eye on that.
Hall again, this time in response to a question on the firmness of the greens:
We're pleased with the firmness. We have technology available to us now that was not available five, six years where we can watch golf shots, which Tom and I have done quite a bit in the last few days, watch how the golf ball is reacting, chat with the players, get their views, filter that information, and if we like the way the golf ball is reacting on a given putting green, we can look at our "True Firm" data and quantify that information.
It's not a precise science, but it's much more precise than it used to be, like walk on it and, yeah, this feels right. We're able to quantify it now and we actually last evening ... let me step back. Last four or five days we've been drying the golf course down, sprinklers were not running last night. There was some "corrective watering" that was applied to several greens that were on the firmer end of the spectrum, to bring those back to more the middle of the spectrum and some of the longer holes, 6, as an example, where we want that to be slightly more receptive than the average because of the type of shot they're playing.
We're going to stay on top of this. We utilized the wonderful weather that we had the last few days and that helped us dry down and Rich Taylor was able to look at the forecast and say, "Now is when we have to move to dry it down. We're going to get a marine layer. Now is the time to dry it down." And now it's in our hands now, mother nature is not going to participate in this process, it doesn't appear. We will be mindful of keeping it right where it is.
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