SAN DIEGO — The United States Golf Association routinely holds a news conference before the start of the U.S. Open to talk about the course, the host city and, on occasion, announce where the tournament is heading in the future. While there was nothing significant reported Wednesday at Torrey Pines, there was a big tease by one of the USGA’s highest-ranking officials.
We already know the venues that will host the U.S. Opens between 2022 and 2027. Still, last year, John Bodenhamer, the USGA’s senior managing director of championships, hinted that a set rotation of courses could be in the works. The R&A already uses a rota of courses as host sites for the British Open, so the popular thinking has been the USGA might adopt a similar system.
Bodenhamer was asked if there were more details that he could share, but he said no. “For us, it’s a priority to really take the U.S. Open and the U.S. Women’s Open to what we think of as the cathedrals of the game, the very best places to play our championships,” he said.
It’s safe to say that Pebble Beach Golf Links is a “cathedral of the game,” and so is Oakmont, Winged Foot, Pinehurst No. 2 and the Olympic Club. Whether Torrey Pines’ South Course is can be debated, but Tiger Woods’ dramatic win here in 2008, coupled with its stunning made-for-TV views, certainly makes it iconic. The USGA loves this municipal facility.
“I think the way we think about that is really something that Nick Price said a few years ago on our championship committee,” Bodenhamer said. “It’s important where the players win their U.S. Open, U.S. Women’s Open. So, you know what, we’ve been asking the players, where do you want to win your U.S. Open? So, we’ve been thinking about that.”
To be clear, winning a major championship is a fantastic achievement for any golfer, but when he or she wins at specific courses, it’s worth even more in the eyes of their peers and the golf world. For instance, Paula Creamer not only won a U.S. Women’s Open, but she also won at Oakmont. Major bonus points. Justin Rose won the 2013 U.S. Open at Merion, where Ben Hogan won in 1953 and Lee Trevino defeated Jack Nicklaus in 1971. Again, big bonus points.
“We don’t have anything to announce today or really in the near future, but we’re thinking and talking a lot about it,” Bodenhamer said. “I would just say buckle up because there’s really some cool things coming. I would say that on both sides, of the U.S. Open and the U.S. Women’s Open. Won’t be too long, but we’ve got some more work to do.”
Did a blue-blazer-wearing USGA official just tell us to “Buckle up?”
If a set group of courses were to be created for U.S. Opens and U.S. Women’s Opens, some courses would have to be on the list. Golf lovers already know them: Pebble Beach, Pinehurst No. 2, Winged Foot, Oakmont, Merion and the Olympic Club, which just hosted the U.S. Women’s Open for the first time, all should be regular stops for our country’s national championships.
It’s an East Coast-biased list, to be sure, especially if you add Shinnecock Hills as the seventh course. Including Torrey Pines could add more balance. The U.S. Open is slated to go to Los Angles Country Club in 2024, so if that goes well and the course proves popular with players and fans, that could help even the balance, too.
There is, however, no Midwest representation in the course list above, and that’s a problem. At the same time, no one has been clamoring for a U.S. Open at Olympia Fields, Oakland Hills, Medinah or Erin Hills, although the Women’s U.S. Open is going there in 2025. In addition, Southern Hills in Tulsa, Oklahoma, is hosting the PGA Championship in 2022. It won’t likely get a U.S. Open anytime soon, and frankly, none of those venues are going to set players’ and fans’ hearts aflutter anyway.
And that’s the point of a rota. The venues the USGA chooses for a rota need to be extraordinary. They need to be, as Bodenhamer put it, cathedrals of the game.
The question that remains to be answered now is, will the USGA be taking us to church more often in the future?
The U.S. Golf Association announced on Monday that a limited number of fans will be on hand for both the U.S. Open and U.S. Women’s Open in California this summer.
The U.S. Golf Association announced on Monday that a limited number of fans will be on hand for both the U.S. Open and U.S. Women’s Open in California this summer.
While the PGA Tour has had limited fans at events for some time now, the LPGA has yet to offer general-admission tickets since that tour restarted last July.
The 76th U.S. Women’s Open will be held at The Olympic Club (Lake Course), in San Francisco from June 3-6, and the 121st U.S. Open will be held at Torrey Pines Golf Course (South Course), in San Diego from June 17-20.
“Last year, we missed the energy that fans bring to our U.S. Open championships,” said John Bodenhamer, USGA senior managing director, Championships. “We are grateful to our local and state health and safety officials in California to be in a position to welcome some fans back this year to witness the greatest players in the world contending for these prestigious championships, while working to maintain the health and safety of all involved.”
The USGA laid out a number of guidelines that will be place to attend both championships in California:
Face coverings will be required for fans, staff and volunteers, and must be worn at all times, regardless of COVID-19 vaccination status
All fans, staff and volunteers will be required to abide by social distancing guidelines
State of California residents must show proof that vaccination against COVID-19 has occurred at least 14 days prior to the championships or that a negative test result has been received within 72 hours of entry
Out-of-state fans must provide proof that vaccination against COVID-19 has occurred at least 14 days prior to the championship
Information regarding COVID-19 testing and vaccination verification will be made available at uswomensopen.com and usopen.com
Sanitization stations will be available throughout the grounds, and spectators will be permitted to bring hand sanitizer
This marks the first time both championships will be held in the same state since 2014 with the U.S. Opens were held in back-to-back weeks at Pinehurst. The only previous time was in 1971, when Lee Trevino won the U.S. Open at Merion Golf Club in Ardmore, Pennsylvania, and JoAnne Carner won the Women’s Open at The Kahkwa Club in Erie, Pennsylvania.
Before the Farmers Insurance Open, the USGA’s John Bodenhamer took time to talk about course setup for the 2021 U.S. Open at Torrey Pines.
This year’s U.S. Open at Torrey Pines, one of the country’s finest municipal golf facilities, located in the tony enclave of La Jolla, California, returns to the site of one of Tiger Woods’s most memorable major triumphs when he beat Rocco Mediate on one leg in a Monday playoff.
This will be the third year that John Bodenhamer is charged with the course setup. Bodenhamer, 60, joined the United States Golf Association in June 2011 and oversees the USGA’s Open championships in his role as senior managing director or championships. He took time to speak to Golfweek about this year’s national championship before heading to San Diego to see how the pros handled the South Course during the Farmers Insurance Open.
Golfweek: What made Torrey Pines an appealing venue for the USGA to return to?
John Bodenhamer: History is something you can’t buy; you can only earn it. Torrey has it because of what happened in 2008. That never goes away. That was one of the greatest championships in the history of the game. That putt Tiger made lives in the minds of so many. That makes us very proud to come back and be able to tell that story again.
As a U.S. Open venue, it’s Southern California, the weather is so ideal if we can avoid the fog. Torrey is a big footprint. We can have a big celebration of the game. We can get in front of a lot of folks. It allows us to provide a traditional U.S. Open that is the ultimate examination.
Tiger Woods celebrates on the 18th green after sinking a putt for a birdie and to force a playoff with Rocco Mediate during the final round of the 2008 U.S. Open at Torrey Pines. (Photo by Richard Hartog/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
What are the most significant changes that have been made to Torrey Pines in preparation for this U.S. Open?
JB: Nothing significant. If memory serves me right, it will play 42 yards longer. We’ve got three new tees. One of them is on No. 10 that will play 449 yards; it played 415 before. There’s another new tee on No. 15 that will play 510, which is 35 yards longer and a new tee on 17 that will play the same yardage but it’s down on the left near the barranca and it’s a new angle, which we really like. It’s a long golf course. It’s 7,680 yards. We won’t play it that long on any day of the U.S. Open. Depending on the weather and the wind, it will play anywhere from 7,200-7,400 yards.
What the city did to bring in Rees Jones and his partner Greg Muirhead to renovate, restore the golf course, give it a facelift, is magnificent not only for the U.S. Open but for the Farmers and to enhance that asset for the city of San Diego is a nice thing to do.
It included everything from drainage to irrigation systems to maintenance roads and paths. On the golf course itself, bunkering not just around the putting greens but in the fairways. They restored all the putting green collars. They had gotten tired and needed to be upgraded. They brought back some of the closely mown areas on Nos. 7, 9 and 15, which will be nice. It won’t be a whole lot different, more of a facelift, but it will provide us what we want to do at a U.S. Open and make a premium on driving.
Q: How do you do that?
JB: The fairways will be narrow. We’re coming out to check on what the Tour does, but I expect the fairway widths will be similar. The difference is January versus June and the weather patterns are much different, the length of the day, temperature and wind patterns are all different. We’ll have a lot more kikuyu in June. They overseeded last fall and so you’ll see a lot more bent and rye and so in the spring the kikuyu will take form again. We’ll probably have a bit longer rough.
Q: What will be the height of the rough you will be looking for?
JB: With kikuyu, 4-plus inches is our starting point. Kikuyu is pretty tough. It could be 3-3 ½. We were planning to come out last summer after the U.S. Open for the California State Amateur to see what the kikuyu was like but we couldn’t because of the pandemic. If it is as dense as we saw this spring, we’ll be in that range. At Winged Foot, we were between 4½-5½, but with kikuyu that’s too much.
Q: Have you considered making the rough longer from, say, 300-plus yards versus shorter distances?
JB: No. It’s very difficult from a maintenance standpoint. You’d have to change mower heights and that’s untenable for the maintenance staff. It would add hours and hours to their job. We have talked about it and there could be ways to do it robotically in the future, but what we do is we have graduated rough. No. 6, which will play as a par 4 in the U.S. Open at 515 yards, will have graduated rough. If you drive it just off the fairway there may be a swath of rough 2½-3 inches where players can hit 5-, 6-, 7-iron out. Frankly, we don’t want them pitching out all the time. We want them to try to knock the ball on the green. We think there will be more birdies but also more double bogeys. On holes like No. 2, you probably won’t see any graduated rough at all. It just depends on the width of it and how much you’ll see.
Going into Pebble (in 2019) we changed our philosophy and we have less graduated rough and want to put more of a premium on driving accuracy and less emphasis on green speeds to allow us to use a few more hole locations. It’s something I feel strongly about. We want it to be about driving the ball in the fairway. That’s something we want to achieve. It’s a strategic choice. We want to slow the greens down a little bit and use more of the hole locations and restore the importance of driving it in the fairway.
Adam Scott plays his shot from the sixth tee during the second round of the 2021 Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines Municipal Golf South Course. (Photo by: Orlando Ramirez-USA TODAY Sports)
Q: What was the thinking behind that change of philosophy, including to slow the greens?
JB: Well, first of all, let me just say that 12.9-13.4 (on the Stimpmeter) isn’t slow. But it really came about from talking to players. We talked to a lot of our past champions, myself, Jason Gore on our staff and Jeff Hall. We want to create something special and very challenging so when a player wins he feels like he did something special but that is also fair and we don’t want green speeds to get away from us, especially if the wind kicks up. With certain hole locations, if the wind kicks up, it can be a problem.
There’s a quote that I think about from Geoff Ogilvy after he won at Winged Foot (in 2006). He was asked after he shot 67 one round, did you enjoy shooting that score on a U.S. Open golf course and he paused and he said, “I don’t think I necessarily enjoyed or had fun doing what I did today, but shooting 67 on a U.S. Open golf course I really feel like I achieved something. It was meaningful. I achieved something special.”
That’s the essence of what we’re trying to achieve. The goal is to drive it in the fairway most of the time and navigate your ball below the hole on the putting greens to have an adequate chance to score. When you miss a putting green there is a penalty for that. We think we can achieve that in the high 12s and low 13s using certain hole locations. I don’t want to call it an old-fashioned U.S. Open but that’s kind of what it is. That’s what we’ve always done and that’s what we endeavor to do.
Q: What can you learn this week from watching the pros play? How will you study the course?
JB: We’ll watch particular holes and we’ll be in touch with the PGA Tour staff and get their thoughts on setup and thinking on some of the new tees at 10 and 15. We’ll look at the width of the fairways, hole locations they are using, compare the wind patterns in January to what we expect in June. We’ll really be watching holes like 6, like 9 with the new collection areas around the green, we’ll definitely be watching the new tee on 10, and I’m assuming they’ll use the new tee on 17 and how players play that. Those are what I’ve circled so far.
We’ll have Jason Gore out there talking to players. We’ll be asking them questions about the golf course as much as we’re asking the Tour staff. What was your target from the new lower tee on 17? Why didn’t you hit driver and chose to lay up short of that bunker on 10? What did you think of the new putting complex on 4 and the new bunker in front of the green? Because they’ll tell us that a fairway needed to be a little wider and it will inform our decisions. We’ll talk to the caddies too. At Pebble Beach, we brought Casey Boyns out. He’s been a caddie there 35 years and he gave us the hole location at 18. There’s a little ridge that we did not see and he did, and we’ll be getting the intel from not just players but Tour officials and those who just know the course well.
Q: If we get good weather and it plays fast and firm, what do you expect the winning score to be?
JB: I knew you were going to go there (laughs). Curtis Strange (1988 and ’89 U.S Open champion) said something that really resonated with me. He said, today’s players are bigger, stronger, more athletic, better coached, better fitted with better equipment, with better course management. He said I really wonder when a player doesn’t shoot under par at a U.S. Open what happened – was it the weather or something with setup? We don’t want 20 under or 20 over to win. I guarantee you that I don’t focus on a score. It’s a metric. We look at it. But I would say a few under par, something like that. You look at what Bryson (DeChambeau) did, 6 under lapping the field (at Winged Foot in September). That was an impressive performance what he did. Everyone else was even or over par. Winged Foot is brutal. It’s a tough test no matter when you play it. From the back tees at Torrey with the length it has and get a little bit of wind from off that ocean, it’s tough, but these players are so good today that I think a few under par is going to win.
One other thing I’ll say to you, and this is genuine, let me come back to scoring – I meant what I said and I wouldn’t change it – but what I’m really trying to say – and it was demonstrated at Pebble and Winged Foot to a small extent but really Pebble – is we do go in with a game plan. We’ll look for firm and fast conditions but not overly so, especially in the fairways. We don’t want them too fast so they stop hitting driver. We want them to hit driver. The greens will be firm, the rough will be up, the greens will be fast and we want a little wind off the ocean. That’s what our plan will be. We’ll modify based on the weather patterns.
I’ll tell you what we don’t do: If we don’t get the wind and it rains and it’s wet, we won’t force hole locations into places that are unfair and we won’t move tees back away from the game plan to get length we didn’t plan on. We didn’t do it at Pebble and we just don’t do that. We’ll just let Torrey Pines be Torrey Pines and we’re not going to play for a score. If it’s 12 under because we didn’t get the weather and it rained and we didn’t get the wind then it will be, and we’ll be fine with that.
