MAMARONECK, N.Y. \u2014 Carnage, they said.<\/p>\n
If you paid attention to the pre-tournament hype for this U.S. Open, you were probably expecting another \u201cMassacre at Winged Foot.\u201d We saw video after video of balls being dropped into ankle rough and disappearing, of putts rolling up to the back of the green and then tumbling, and tumbling, and tumbling all the down to the front. The question wasn\u2019t whether the winning score would be over par\u2014it was whether it would surpass the five-over total that Geoff Ogilvy won with the last time the Open was here, in 2006.<\/p>\n
Instead, after one day, the leader board looks like \u2026 well, a normal golf tournament.<\/p>\n
Justin Thomas shot five-under 65, lowest Open round in history at Winged Foot, and leads. Patrick Reed, Thomas Pieters and Matthew Wolff posted 66s. Rory McIlroy shot 67 and felt he left a few out there. When the sun set on Thursday, there were 21 scores in the 60s on the par-70 West course and only one in the 80s. The scoring average was 72.49\u2014difficult, for sure, but nothing special for a U.S. Open; the first-round score at Winged Foot in 2006 was 74.66.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was great golfing conditions this morning,\u201d said Justin Rose, who shot 73. It\u2019s one thing for a guy who shot 65 to say he felt it was easy. It\u2019s even more telling when someone who shot three over concurs. \u201cThere\u2019s still a tiny bit of moisture on the golf course. It\u2019s receptive to good iron shots.\u201d<\/p>\n
Receptive indeed, particularly early in the day. Weather, of course, is the one thing course-maintenance teams can\u2019t control. And on Thursday morning, there was no wind to speak of and the ground was wet to the touch. One might think that heat would make greens dryer\u2014that\u2019s true in some places at some times, but not in late summer in New York. Because heat brings humidity, and humidity brings moisture. There was hardly any humidity during the practice rounds but it was there on Thursday, and it added an extra bit of moisture that made greens much friendlier to golf balls flying in from 200-plus yards.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re hitting 5-irons that aren\u2019t releasing much,\u201d said Webb Simpson, who teed off at 7:56 a.m. and shot 71. \u201cI don\u2019t know if they wanted them soft on purpose with cooler temperatures and the wind coming, but they\u2019re certainly softer today than they were when I got here on Tuesday.\u201d<\/p>\n
The softness helped, but so did the hole locations. Some were in the middle of the green, like on Nos. 3 and 18. Others were particularly accessible, like the par-3 seventh, where there were two holes-in-one. Others, like the first and sixth holes, were placed at the bottom of ridges, allowing players to use the dramatic contours of these A.W. Tillinghast greens to their advantage. \u201cAugusta-like,\u201d is how Rose described them.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you hit the right shot at the right time, it\u2019s going to move toward the pin,\u201d Rose said. \u201cObviously, I played with Rory [McIlroy], who shot three under and made it look relatively easy. Provided you did the right things at the right time, there were some birdies to be made.\u201d<\/p>\n
Why was the USGA, not necessarily known for taking it easy with its course setups, so generous? A few potential reasons. One, given the governing body\u2019s turbulent history with U.S. Opens of recent vintage\u2014remember Chambers Bay in 2015, Oakmont in 2016 and Shinnecock Hills in 2018\u2014there could be a tendency to err on the side of caution.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe greens are very soft,\u201d Thomas said. \u201cI thought they\u2019d be a little firmer, but I also understood that they need to err on this side so they can get them how they want this weekend.\u201d<\/p>\n
USGA officials know they can turn this course into a bear with little effort, and it looks like Mother Nature will do most of the lifting on that front on Friday. Rain is forecasted, as are wind gusts up to 30 miles per hour.<\/p>\n
Another potential explanation is purely logistical in nature. This U.S. Open was initially scheduled for June 18-21, near the summer solstice. The sun rises before 5:30 a.m. and sets around 8:30. The sun rose at 6:38 on Thursday morning and set at 7:02. That\u2019s two-and-a-half less hours for the field to finish. Knowing this, the USGA cut the field down from 156 to 144, but that only corresponds to two less tee times given the threesomes off double-tees on Thursday and Friday. Everyone involved wants to avoid rounds not ending on time (three players have to return to the course Friday morning to finish up their first rounds due to darkness) or worse a Monday finish, and a gentler course setup leads to faster play.<\/p>\n
Again, it\u2019s a long week, and this article could look rather myopic come Sunday evening. Golf tournaments are 72 holes for a reason, and this one is only 25 percent over. The winner could still well be over par, and odds are you won\u2019t see a score lower than Thomas\u2019 65 all week.<\/p>\n
But for one day, at least, big, bad Winged Foot played like just another hard golf course.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MAMARONECK, N.Y. \u2014 Carnage, they said. If you paid attention to the pre-tournament hype for this U.S. Open,…","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6716,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"csco_display_header_overlay":false,"csco_singular_sidebar":"","csco_page_header_type":"","csco_page_load_nextpost":"","csco_post_video_location":[],"csco_post_video_location_hash":"","csco_post_video_url":"","csco_post_video_bg_start_time":0,"csco_post_video_bg_end_time":0,"csco_post_video_bg_volume":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[71,4612,959,310,132,4613,4611,1548],"class_list":["post-6715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-justin-thomas","tag-low-scores","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-golf","tag-story","tag-us-open-2020-heres-why-winged-foot-played-surprisingly-easy-and-why-you-shouldnt-get-used-to-it","tag-usopen2020","tag-winged-foot","cs-entry","cs-video-wrap"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/vive.im\/@fogolf\/117336020490921420","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fogolf.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6715","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fogolf.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fogolf.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fogolf.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fogolf.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6715"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.fogolf.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6715\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fogolf.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fogolf.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fogolf.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fogolf.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}