Listen to Will Harvey and Shane Dyel — with special guest Niklas Nørgaard — talk through the short game conditions that players are facing this week at the U.S. Open.
i think the expectations to what a good shot is is so different this week Hi everybody I’m Shane Dial I’m Will Harvey And we’re here this week at the 125th US Open at Oakmont It’s a stunning venue Like you can really see the definition the cuts between the grass It’s going to offer a lot of questions with wedges It’s going to be some tests around the greens Absolutely The fairway is pristine It’s what everybody wants to look for in terms of where they want their ball placement to be But as you get away from the fairway things start to get a little bit more difficult And as you can tell this grass is really manicured but this grass develops a lower spin shot And so it’s important for players to be able to find the floor with this into the rough Oakmont this week has 4in rough One of the things that the players are going to be looking for is how can they get the ball out as quickly as they can and onto the putting green But a lot of the players are going to be able to get through this if they are able to create speed and develop that spin How’s the rough been so far normally I think I have a little bit of an advantage to be out there and I can just try and get it up there anyway but not yet There’s not a chance to get anything more than nine iron out of it I think the expectations to what a good shot is is so different this week What you see the challenge being from the sand Well you have to go as close to the ball as possible to get enough spin because you’re going to get some lies where you it’s going to be so much downhill and you won’t even be able to stop it Get close to the ball and put more spin on Thank you very much Have a good week Play well Thank you very much So we just talked to Nicholas Norgard He’s playing A+ this week and it’s a big trend that we’ve seen with players We’ve got a really thick rough We’ve got soft powdery bunkers So something with a slightly wider sole is going to work really well here at Oakmont We’ve got KStar here which a few players have gone into and also the A+ head So you can see we’ve got a bit of width on there which is going to give you speed If you get the club cut up in here we’re not going to get any ball speed which means we’re not going to get the carry on to the green Another trend that we’ve had this week is a lot of players asking for fresh wedges So groove wear is a big thing So by making sure the grooves are fresh we can guarantee that we’re going to get the best out of every shot Move that debris out the way and get the best strike and best contact we possibly can The bunkers here at Oakmont are very very soft and it’s going to create a speed problem So a lot of the players are going to have to increase their club head speeds in order to be able to produce the higher softer shots that are needed here at Oakmont Even though it is a soft style of sand it’s got a lot of granulars in it And so it’s going to create other problems too So if too much gets in between the ball and the face players are going to see a little bit less spin So it’s so important to have the right wedge this week to be able to get through the sand and be able to produce that speed and that height
