USGA CEO Mike Whan has brought both the LPGA and the USGA into the future. He is a master marketer and deft communicator of the game’s new, more responsible and accessible image. I’m a fan.
Which is why I was so disappointed with the “product” Whan and his team were selling during the U.S. Women’s Open at Erin Hills.
Every USGA event is a promotion—of the game, of its tradition, of its stars, and its aims for the future. What Whan and his team promoted during the Open was the most expensive, least sustainable version of the game you can buy. I hope we don’t see the same at Oakmont, but fear that we will.
A little background: For a decade (at least) the USGA has embodied golf’s new conscience, promoting environmental sustainability, sensible maintenance practices and reduced water usage, while pushing efforts to make the game faster and more attractive to busy young families. Ten years ago it even conducted a 125-person international symposium on pace-of-play, and it, with Golf Digest’s contributions, has spent millions on sustainability and water-usage issues. Those of us who participated in dozens of grow-the-game meetings saw these initiatives as just what the doctor ordered.
The U.S. Women’s Open was not that. It offered the following:
1. Green speeds bordering on 14 that amplified Erin Hills’ severely undulating greens to the point of embarrassing the best players in women’s golf. Approach shots that were close to accurate bounced off putting surfaces and rolled 20 yards away. Players routinely chipped and putted through greens, off greens, sometimes into bunkers. “These speeds are both crazy and not necessary,” says Lucius Riccio, author of “Golf’s Pace of Play Bible” and founder of Fairway IQ, which consults on the issue. “The idea was never to have speed for its own sake, but to improve trueness. With modern equipment, trueness should be achievable with lower speeds.”
2. Pace of play that made a joke of association slogans like “Ready Golf” and “While We’re Young.” This included a six-hour round on Saturday, which should surprise no one given those green speeds, says Riccio. He’s found that every foot of green speed (at higher numbers such as these) can add 15 to 20 minutes to pace of play. Besides slowing play, greens this fast are incredibly expensive and difficult to maintain.
3. Course preparation in general that belied the association’s stated environmental goals. The USGA will argue that its Opens are designed to provide “the ultimate examination” and therefore are the exception to the rule. Unfortunately, their championships also serve as a model for green and golf committees around the country, some of which want their member-guest and club championships to have similar course conditions, and to golfers who do want speed for speed’s sake. You can’t produce these conditions without chemical applications that border on dangerous. During the Women’s Open a realtor I know got a call from a client insisting that any house he bought be nowhere near a golf course. He had read a recent study in JAMA Network Open that found “that pesticides applied to golf courses may play a role in the incidence of PD [Parkinson’s Disease] for nearby residents.” Residents within a mile of a course, the study found, were 126% more likely to develop PD than those six miles away, due to contamination of ground water.
4. A championship conclusion focused more on disaster than triumph. Instead of celebrating Maja Stark’s expertly-played four rounds, we watched, as she did, as a young professional spent 20 minutes struggling to a closing-hole triple bogey. (Meanwhile, the opportunity for Nelly Korda, who tied for second, to pressure Stark had dissolved a few minutes earlier when her reasonably struck approach bounced through the green and rolled 15 yards away, making birdie almost impossible.)
I’m afraid golf is feeling fat and happy again. We struggled for decades to recruit players, to assure young professionals that we were relevant. Then COVID solved our problems, delivering players and new members in droves. That should be a good thing. But based on what we saw at Erin Hills and at other tournaments, I’m afraid it may have convinced some of golf’s leaders to sell difficulty and extravagance again.
This article was originally published on golfdigest.com
