New #Bills RB Damien Harris: “Buffalo is a special place”
As training camp is fully underway for the Buffalo Bills, the roster features a new addition in their offense’s backfield.
With that, also comes the first full week of live-action and of free-agent addition at running back, Damien Harris.
Harris joined the team from the AFC rival Patriots this offseason and is competing for playing time with second-year back James Cook, and fellow free agent addition Latavius Murray.
“Buffalo is a special place, it’s one of the most special places in America,” Harris said to the media about his new playing home. “You only get to truly experience it as a Buffalo Bill, the right way.”
Ideally, Harris will be the physical, big back the team has been missing under Sean McDermott and help take the ball, and the pressure off QB Josh Allen, on third down and goal line plays.
The front office and coaching staff are hoping he’ll do just that, as are the fans whose support Harris has already begun to feel in his first training camp with the Bills.
“We had a practice in Rochester the other day in the rain and no one flinched or moved a muscle, it was a full, packed house,” The RB added.” So it’s just things like that that mean a lot to you and it just makes you want to win for them that much more.”
The 26-year-old was drafted by New England in the third round of the 2019 NFL Draft, after playing college ball at Alabama where he backed up Derek Henry before winning the starting job after Henry left to go pro. After four years with the Patriots, a fanbase like Buffalo’s has been a positive change.
“This is crazy, it almost made me late for practice, but this is great, these are the best fans in the world, so it was great to come out here and strap it on front of them for the first time in our stadium, my first time here on the good side. Obviously, the energy is electric and I’m glad to be here.”
Though last year’s second-round pick, RB James Cook has seen most of the first-team reps, Harris gained more time with the starters on the seventh day of camp. While he’s learning the offense, it’s the endzone that continues to catch his eye.
“It does, it does, anytime you can get into the box, you always want to touch that money so as runningbacks especially,” Harris shared. “When you get the ball, it’s the hardest yard in football to gain, it’s the most on the line and you want to touch that paint so your heart starts beating a little bit faster, but you’ve got to be able to maintain your composure, red your key, do your job and hopefully get into the end zone.”
Four aces on one day on the same hole was cool, but it certainly won’t happen again this year.
Here’s perhaps the safest bet for this week’s PGA Championship: Four players won’t make holes-in-one on the same day at No. 6 of Oak Hill’s East Course. Sounds like a silly bet, of course, but it happened during the second round of the 1989 U.S. Open on the East.
There’s no way that exact feat will reoccur in this year’s PGA Championship on the same layout, because that hole no longer exists.
In a two-hour span that morning in 1989, Doug Weaver, Mark Wiebe, Jerry Pate and Nick Price each made an ace on the 167-yard par 3. The hole wasn’t exactly in a bowl, but it was pretty close, having been cut into the base of a swale. None of the four holes-in-one flew into the cup, each instead landing left, right or beyond the flag then curling into the cup. Each player used a 7-iron.
An amazing occurrence, for sure. It had never happened before in major championship or PGA Tour golf. Before the round, tournament officials had noted that it was a likely spot for ace, and they ended up with four.
That hole isn’t on the course any longer, thanks to a recent renovation by architect Andrew Green to Donald Ross’s layout in Rochester, New York. That sixth hole from 1989 was created during a 1970s renovation to the course by George Fazio and Tom Fazio. Green ripped it out, instead installing a new par 3 as No. 5. Green’s new No. 6 is a punishing par 4 that plays over and along a creek, earning the name Double Trouble. The hole is listed on the scorecard at 503 yards.
Not that a repeat of what has been dubbed the “Four Aces” – not to be confused with the LIV team of the same name – was likely anyways. The PGA of America reports that the odds of any Tour player making an ace on a given par 3 are 3,000 to 1. The National Hole-in-One Association calculated at the time that the odds of four Tour pros acing the same hole in one day to be 8.7 million to one, although such a friendly hole location that allows balls to break into the cup from multiple directions surely improved those odds a bit.
What do the pros face this week in the PGA Championship? StrackaLine shares the details on Oak Hill East.
Oak Hill’s East Course in Rochester, New York – site of this week’s PGA Championship – originally was designed by architectural legend Donald Ross and opened in 1926. The layout was revised several times over the decades, most recently as Andrew Green put much of the Ross flavor back into the East.
Oak Hill’s East will play to 7,394 yards with a par of 70 for this week’s major championship.
Thanks to yardage books provided by StrackaLine – the maker of detailed yardage books for thousands of courses around the world – we can see exactly the challenges the pros face this week at Oak Hill.
Starting in 2015, the club decided to put the Donald Ross flair back into the course.
Nothing remains static on a golf course for long.
Grass grows, often in new places and in unexpected ways. Bunkers shift as sand is blasted out by players. Trees grow, blocking light, air and playing lines. Undulations shift on greens, which themselves often shrink over years and decades. Whether through intentional architectural efforts or natural evolution, every golf course changes in time.
Opened in 1926 with a design by architectural legend Donald Ross, the East had undergone many changes over the decades, many of them in pursuit of additional challenge to the best players in the world. Among its many championships, the East has hosted three PGA Championships (1980, ’03 and ’13) and three U.S. Opens (1956, ’68 and ’89), with winners including the likes of Jack Nicklaus, Lee Trevino and Curtis Strange. Add to those events a rich history of amateur and senior events, plus the 1995 Ryder Cup, and Oak Hill’s rich championship history clearly ranks among the best clubs in the world.
The greens for Nos. 4 and 5 at Oak Hill Country Club’s East Course in Rochester, New York (Photo: Gabe Gudgel/Golfweek)
But the course had changed dramatically over the years, losing much of its Ross flavor. Robert Trent Jones tweaked the East in the 1950s and ’60s, including – in the name of spectator flow – the replacement of a par 4 considered by many to be among the best in the country.
In the 1970s, George and Tom Fazio further modernized the layout, redesigning three holes – the fifth, sixth and 15th – and moving the 18th green. While these changes were all implemented in the interest of increased difficulty for touring professionals, the club received criticism about eliminating too much of Ross’s original design.
Add in naturally occurring changes to the course over the years, and club officials knew it was time to make some changes.
“It’s just like owning a home in some regard. You always have to do some housekeeping, always have to do some updating,” said Jeff Corcoran, Oak Hill’s manager of golf courses and grounds. “And I think the progression of the game dictates a lot of the work you need to do, in some regards, if you want to be a golf course that hosts major championships.”
Starting in 2015, the club decided to put the Ross flair back into the course. It hired architect Andrew Green, who the club said worked with Corcoran; Jeff Sluman, PGA Tour professional and Rochester native; and an East Course Restoration Committee led by Tim Thaney and Jim McKenna. The club said its objectives were to add length where possible, create more forward tees for members, expand areas where cups could be cut into greens and to evaluate options for holes that had been changed over the years. Green used Ross’s original drawings and historical photos to determine the best course of action in restoring the layout.
“Donald Ross set the East Course at Oak Hill Country Club on a stunning piece of ground where the holes turn direction and flow over the property in an inspired fashion,” Green – who has established himself as a restoration expert with such work completed at Wannamoisett, Inverness, Congressional and several other such classic layouts – told the club at the outset of the restoration. “We will utilize every ounce of historic data to reflect the strategy, style and intent of Ross with a keen eye on the way the game of golf is played today. The results will protect the legacy of Oak Hill for decades to come.”
The newly renovated sixth hole at Oak Hill Country Club’s East Course in Rochester, N.Y. (Gary Kellner/PGA of America)
Work wrapped up in 2019, with each of the 18 greens having been rebuilt to U.S. Golf Association specifications with enhanced drainage to provide firm playing conditions. All the bunkers were rebuilt with improved drainage and some were relocated, and they are now more classically Ross in appearance. An overabundance of trees of was removed to improve playing conditions, open vistas and reestablish playing lines. More than 175,000 square feet of new bent grass was installed on the putting surfaces and approaches, the club said, and Green led the restoration of green sizes and sometimes the alteration of existing contours to reestablish classic hole locations that had been lost in time.
“The big thing people are going to see is a tremendous amount of variety in the daily setup, because there are going to be hole locations that members haven’t seen for maybe 40, 50 years,” Green said in a club video commemorating the restoration. “It’s going to add to the aura and how great a major championship venue that it is.”
Most important, the three holes that been altered by previous designers were rebuilt to better match the intent of Ross, even if it was impossible to rebuild them exactly.
“Nos. 5, 6, 15 and to a lesser extent 18 had been the three or four holes that have been the most vilified here at Oak Hill,” Corcoran said. “They are the holes that were redone prior to the ’80 PGA. As we were walking around, we were like, if we’re going to all this trouble on the East Course, shouldn’t we rectify this biggest perceived problem?
“It really came down to, if we were going to redo something, how would we redo it in keeping the original architectural intent that Donald Ross had envisioned of this property? Andrew is phenomenal at that.”
The newly renovated fifth hole at Oak Hill Country Club’s East Course in Rochester, N.Y. (Gary Kellner/PGA of America)
Green designed a new fifth hole, a par 3 named Little Poison, in the same spot that held a par-3 fifth for the 1968 U.S. Open. The new green is slightly elevated and surrounded by Ross-inspired bunkers, with a wide range of flagstick locations and assorted challenges for any player who misses the putting surface on approach.
The club said the new par-4 sixth “sympathetically represents” Ross’s original par 4. Named Double Trouble, the hole crosses Allen’s Creek – a prominent feature throughout any round on the East – and can be stretched beyond 500 yards in a championship.
The new par-3 15th hole, named Plateau, removes a pond introduced during the Fazios’ renovation in the 1970s and reintroduces a large swale aside the “Postage Stamp” style of green that is long and narrow.
“They just feel like they flow,” Corcoran said of the new holes. “When you used to go to the old fifth and sixth holes, you would get to those holes and go, it just doesn’t flow, it doesn’t feel right. Anybody who had a little bent toward golf course architecture could definitely see it.
“Restoring that architectural intent, there’s just something very satisfying about that and knowing that future generations are going to get 18 contiguous holes to play out here. That’s a pretty special thing.”
Another season of Notre Dame basketball is underway. After a one-year absence, the action tips off once again with an exhibition game. This time, they’ll be welcoming Division III program Nazareth College of Rochester, New York, to South Bend. Here are five things to think about as the Irish see their first game action of the season:
The Bills had a tough time traveling on Christmas like many in western New York.
Because of the weather, the Bills (12-3) could not leave right after their 35-13 win against the Bears (3-12) on Saturday. Instead, the team waited until Sunday, Christmas Day, and flew home to a Rochester airport instead of the Buffalo-Niagara International location since it was closed.
Upon landing, the local fans took advantage. Bills Mafia out in Rochester welcomed the team home… or at least welcomed them close to home…
Check out images of fans with the Bills out in Rochester that were shared on social media below:
Last month, the story of a loyal Bills fan and his friendly neighborly rivalry with a Jets fan in Rochester, NY, made national headlines. Western New York resident Michael Mansfield painted his home with the Bills red, white and blue colors and logo …
Last month, the story of a loyal Bills fan and his friendly neighborly rivalry with a Jets fan in Rochester, NY, made national headlines.
Western New York resident Michael Mansfield painted his home with the Bills red, white and blue colors and logo in rebuttal to his Jets fan neighbor.
PepsiCo. responded via Twitter with an offer to make a commercial and some billboards if their post about them reached 1,000 retweets. Bills Mafia obliged and Pepsi lived up to their end of the deal and you can now see the commercial and billboards the company made.
The two neighbors make appearances in the commercial, as does former Bill Stevie Johnson. The ad has gone live and will also air during Sunday’s game against the Jets.
Buffalo Bills fan gets help from Pepsi for a billboard.
A loyal Bills fan went viral for painting their house with the team’s logo, but the reasoning was what really stood out.
This fan was just…claiming their territory, literally.
The decision to paint the side of their home was made in response to his neighbor flying a New York Jets flag. Western New York resident Michael Mansfield has a friendly rivalry with Jets fan Eric Jensen, which began when Jensen first moved into the area.
Reported on by WHAM-TV in Rochester, the story soon went viral, which happened to catch the attention of PepsiCo. When the company saw the neighbors’ story, they wanted to celebrate Mansfield and his unapologetic love for the Bills. The brand did that and more. Pepsi reached out publicly via Twitter with an offer to make a commercial and some billboards if the post reached 1,000 retweets (albeit unbeknown at first to Mansfield).
Here’s Pepsi’s message:
Hey Michael – We like your style. Let’s take this rivalry city-wide. Want to make your own commercial and some billboards around Rochester to really rub it in your neighbor’s face? 1,000 RTs on this tweet and it’s on! #BillsMafiahttps://t.co/EWAVMGV4kG
From his village block in Bloomfield, NY, into the heart of the city of Rochester, Pepsi’s response caught the eye of Bills faithful who came through in support on his behalf, surpassing that 1,000 number easily.
“As soon as we heard the news about Michael’s unapologetic love for his football team, the Buffalo Bills, we knew we had to get involved,” said Nancy Gold, Marketing Manager, PepsiCo Beverages North America (North Division).
Looks like Bills fans will be supporting Pepsi now:
