Normally, people complain that the Open setup is too hard. Karrie Webb, who finished about a million strokes out of the lead at Interlachen (actually, 15), thinks that Mike Davis and crew set up the Open to be too simple. What?

Former world No.1 Webb believes the Interlachen course is playing far too easily for the biggest championship in women’s golf, and she lays the blame firmly with the United States Golf Association.

And with 19 players under par after the third round, and leader Stacy Lewis on nine-under 210, Webb made a valid point.

“I really don’t understand what the USGA have tried to achieve this week, because they’ve kept the greens soft all week,” said the two-time Open champion, who was 12 strokes from the lead.

Didn’t it rain?! That would hurt that a lot. Anyway, Webb complains that the course was so soft that it made ballstriking not as important as putting.

Webb believes that firm greens reward the best ball strikers, those who can control the distance they hit their approach shots, but that soft greens have made the Open more of a putting contest.

“It opens it up to people who don’t have great distance control and to me that’s what the US Open is about, good ball-striking.

“If you’re putting yourself in positions where you should be, you’re supposed to be at an advantage, but I don’t think it’s playing that way right now.”

Mike Davis came to his own defense on the allegations:

Mike Davis, the USGA official responsible for the course set-up, said the greens had been the same speed and firmness every day, including practice days.

“No disrespect to Karrie, but this is as consistent (a course set-up) as I’ve ever seen,” he said.

First of all, I love the “no disrespect” line. After watching Talladega Nights the other day, I am going to begin using that line to make putrid remarks about people. I’m a little off track, though.

The real point is whether or not the Open was too easy. 12 players finished under par this week. That is unusually high for any Open. Pine Needles had five finish under par last year. But that played to a par of 71.

Interlachen’s par was rigged by Davis and the USGA to play at an unheard of 73 with five par 5s. Let’s just say that Interlachen was instead set up to play at par 71 but kept the same layout. That would knock off 8 shots to total par. In that case, only In-Bee Park would have finished under par. The artificial par made scoring look better than it really was.

In-Bee did kind of prove Webb’s theory, though. If you look at my instant final round analysis, it shows that In-Bee was not very solid in the fairways and greens department. She won on putting, by finishing 2nd in that statistic. Among the top 14 putters this week, 8 of them finished sixth or better. Maybe she has a point.

But, if that was the key – and the Open was a putting contest – Webb should have fared much better than she did. She is T29 in putts per hole this season on the LPGA Tour. That’s in the top 25% of all players. She is also 122 in driving accuracy, which should not have hurt her if this was just a putting contest. Also, being 13th in greens in regulation for the year would lead you to believe that there is little correlation between her poor driving and hitting greens. She should not have had a problem in putting the ball in the correct position and subsequently making putts.

Too easy? Maybe. But, if so, Webb should have finished a whole lot better.

Interlachen is a bit of an unusual setup for a national championship. Coming off of Torrey, though, everything Mike Davis does is as pretty as a bouquet of long stems. The US Women’s Open course is setup to be a par 73 – a rare standard for par. Then again, lately we’ve been beginning to question to real meaning of par in professional golf.

Still, you can expect the normal Open features of tiered rough, fast greens, etc. But Davis has also set up Interlachen with 5 par 5s, probably to the benefit of lengthy hitters since 3 are reachable. He also has several short par 4s which are quickly becoming the Davis trademark. All in all, it should provide for some good “scoring” even though par has been artificially set in that regard.

I know that the Open is over and we should be talking about the Travelers Championship – yeah, right. But I wanted to have one last post on the entire Open experience.

Geoff Shackelford has a couple of nice posts with reviews of his experience and they seemed largely positive (not talking about course design here).

Here’s his post on the experience, and one the Championship Vision mini TVs provided by American Express (or at least sponsored by them). The TVs are very similar to the ones used at the Players Championship, but are by RCA instead of Kangaroo TV.

You’ve heard me, the players, and the media in attendance rave about the course setup. Mike Davis has really set the bar for major championship setup. In fact, I think he is the inspiration behind a second set of tees that I bet will be coming to Augusta National for next year’s Masters. I would also mention that the PGA Championship was really the gold standard for setup until Davis came along – fair, but tough. Davis borrowed from that setup, added his own elements (tiered rough among them), and had the Open setup at his disposal to create a great experience.

I came into the Mike Davis era ranking the US Open as my least favorite major to watch. After this year, it has skyrocketed to second place. Nothing is going to change my mind about the Open Championship, sorry.

How about you? Is the USGA changing your mind about their feature championship?

I’m beginning to think that Mike Davis is onto something much larger than a brilliant Open setup. I think he could be opening up the concept of modular golf. This is going to be far out there, but I want your thoughts on it.

Today, 14 played as a 267 yard par 4. It could have easily been a very lengthy par 3 – still short of Oakmont’s #8 last year. Why not play it like a par 3 and change par to 70 for the day?

How about taking the 18th hole and bumping it down to 470 and a par 4 for a round and throwing in the Sunday Buick Invitational pin? Originally, it was the idea to make 18 into a par 4 for the Open. It would not have hurt to throw that bone in for a day.

Why not coming up with an ultra short tee for a hole like 13? Tiger and Lee Westwood were made to look like fools from 290 yards in the fairway. If that were the tee, and the hole a par 4, would most golfers have given that a stab? I think so. If not, they would have a 100 yard or less pitch that is awkward up the hill.

Certainly, not every course could play this way. But, it might be worth a chance. If par doesn’t matter – and, really, it doesn’t in major championship golf – then the Mike Davis’ of the world can do anything that their imagination conjures.

Consider this from Jim Furyk:

“As far as protecting par, I firmly believe the USGA wants to make the golf course as difficult and as testing a golf course as they can without going overboard,” Furyk said. “For the best players in the world, that’s going to be shooting somewhere around even par. But if it’s 5 under or 5 over, I don’t think it really matters.”

My hope is that the rumors of introducing forward tees at Augusta National will be true. If that is the case, there may very well be some relief for the disease of Par-itis at the Masters.

I said after last year’s US Open at Oakmont that the USGA was heading in the right direction with its setups and that it was beginning to surge ahead of the Masters in my ranking of major championships. Despite another winning score of +5, I said that Mike Davis and Jim Hyler were going in the right direction with short par 4s, holes of greatly varying lengths, and an aesthetically pleasing course. Yes, the rough was dreadful. Players complained a lot. But, it was a means to set up the suits at Far Hills for what was coming this year.

Torrey Pines was to be the setup that made or broke Mike Davis as the setup guy for the national championship. He replaced Tom Meeks, who ushered in a new era of Open design that was almost universally hated and practically indefensible for a national championship. Davis had a low bar to beat from his predecessor, but after the last two Opens, some may have been getting impatient.

In reality, there was no reason to be worried. As golf writer Jay Flemma put it in his blog:

The rough and greens at Oakmont and Winged Foot are the toughest in the world. You’re naturally going to have higher U.S. Open scores there. Torrey is not in the same category of difficulty; there is no excuse for a +5 winning score here. He also knows +5 at Torrey would be viewed as a more manufactured result than a +5 at Oakmont.

Davis made sure that he had a lot to work with for this Open at Torrey Pines – only the second daily fee course to host the championship. He had seaside views, big crowds, and awesome hand picked threesomes. He had the longest course in US Open history at his disposal. There were greens rolling at perfect speed being played into from modestly shaped fairways.

Best of all, though, Davis also made sure that he had lots of tees at different angles so that Torrey would play a little different every day. He offered a taste of his genius when he opted to play the par 3 third hole at its shortest 142 yard tee. Then he did not choose to play the monster 13th hole at its longest tee – he waited until Sunday to do that.

And what a Sunday setup. He went for the tees up in the final round. The course played almost 400 yards less than its maximum. In particular, two holes told me that Davis has convinced the brass at the USGA that he makes good sense. He shortened the 435 yard 14th hole to 267 yards and enticed almost 75% of the field to go for the green despite a canyon off of the back of a mowed fringe. That hole played shorter than #8 at Oakmont last year…and that was a par 3. Then, he moved up the tee on 18 to 525 yards and just begged for players to go for it in two. Unfortunately, lousy drives from the final two groups did not allow that to happen, but it made for such intrigue anyway.

This is what the Open is meant to be – tough, long, but fair. There were birdie holes out there. The players may not have made many birdies, but it was because of them, not because of the course. What a treat.

I want to publicly congratulate Mike Davis and the USGA for turning things around at the Open. For as much as I hate corporate sponsorships and not acting on technology that is hurting the game, they have earned my respect for believing in where Mike Davis was going long before it ever manifested itself. The payoff for Davis comes in the form of one of the greatest Opens ever – of course thanks to a man from Greensburg, PA, and the greatest golfer today.

Steve Elling makes a great point about the possibility of a birdie (or eagle….GASP!) winning the US Open on Sunday evening. It has not been done in 82 years, as Elling explains in a May 12 article:

Mike Davis, the director of rules and competition for the USGA, has fielded feedback from staffers, players and a number of helpful critics and conjured up the most enticing news at an Open venue in decades. The tee on the 18th, he said, will be positioned to allow even medium-length hitters a chance to reach the green in two.

“From a personal standpoint, nothing would please me more than to see giant swings in scoring on this hole,” Davis told CBSSports.com. “A player eagling the 72nd hole to win would be a dream come true.”

The last time a player won the Open by a shot with a birdie on the 72nd hole was in 1926, when Bobby Jones turned the trick at Scioto Country Club in Columbus, Ohio.

Eighty-two years? Relatively speaking, the days when amateurs like Jones ruled were when dinosaurs walked the earth. But since closing par-5 holes have been few — the Open has mostly featured a tough par-4 as its closing hole — opportunities for winning birdies have been greatly reduced. Indeed, there was considerable dissent within the USGA ranks about whether to convert the 18th at Torrey into a long par-4 hole in keeping with tradition over the years, but Davis’ side won the spirited argument.

I am very happy that the USGA left 13 as the hole that will basically play as a lengthy par 3 for most players and kept the drama at 18.

The US Open begins on Thursday at Torrey Pines and there is no shortage of storylines leading into the championship. The most obvious is the return of Tiger Woods from knee surgery after a failed bid at a fifth Masters title. Admittedly, he may not be at 100% after rehabilitation, but he has said that may very well not matter. Given his record at Torrey Pines and that he is going for his fifth consecutive win at that facility, he may very well be right. A win would put him within another Tiger Slam of tying Jack Nicklaus’ impossible mark of 18 professional majors.

Lest we forget, though, it is important to mention of the other player of significance in the field – world #2 Phil Mickelson. Mickelson is a San Diego native and claims to have played Torrey Pines over 1000 times in his life. Needless to say, he will be the hometown hero in addition to being the usual rooting interest of the crowd. The People’s Champion has had several close calls in the US Open before and it may be time to make his first run at the national championship since his idiotic moment at Winged Foot two years ago.

Up until Thursday, the third best player in golf right now will be a part of the story of who is not in the field. Kenny Perry, a winner of the Memorial and near winner in Atlanta, chose to avoid US Open qualifying and stay home this weekend. Claiming that he never liked Torrey Pines, he took his long ball and straight driving and hot hand back to Kentucky. He will appear again next at the Travelers Championship.

His story will fade into the background, though, by Thursday. The course will become the story very quickly. It is the longest course in US Open history by almost 400 yards and plays to a length of 7643. Playing to a par of 71, USGA Senior Director of Rules and Competition Mike Davis has said that he expects a winning score under par.

Fit into those 18 holes are two par 4s over 500 yards, a driveable par 4, and a closing par 5 that is set up for pure drama. The whole course features narrow fairways with a continuation of the tiered rough approach. The length ranges from 1.75 inches to 3.5 inches. That is low by USGA standards, but will feature Kikuyu in the rough blend and could lead to some very inconsistent lies. It fits the championship standard of the rough creating some degree of uncertainty as to the next option, but will also allow for recovery shots from the rough.

The entire course will be extremely firm, probably helping the course to play a few hundred yards shorter than 7643. The greens will be no exception, playing in the 13 range on the Stimpmeter. Basically, the setup matches the usual US Open mantra – long, tight, and firm.

The most curious aspect of the setup is that it is relatively fair and tame by comparison to setups that players have seen on the PGA Tour in each of the last two weeks. Two weeks ago, Muirfield Village was setup more like Winged Foot than Torrey Pines will be. The greens were running faster, and rough was almost three inches deeper than the initial cut will be at Torrey Pines. TPC Southwind was equally brutal in terms of scoring conditions. The pin placements throughout the week were nasty. The score to get into the playoff was four under par. That very well could be the winning score this week at the Open.

The point is that the players on the PGA Tour are not unfamiliar with setups that push the course beyond its value for the sake of their egos. Still, it prepares players very well for the litany of problems that the Open presents for players – small fairways, massive length, lightning fast greens, and unreachable pin placements.

The combination of players and course are really what makes the US Open such a compelling week. It is understood as and intended to be the ultimate test in the mental aspects of golf. After nearly three years of wondering just how this thing will turn out, Torrey Pines looks to be Mike Davis’ masterpiece. And, because of the USGA’s pandering, they have also introduced one last storyline to the championship.

Will anyone shoot a round worse than Tony Romo?

Mike Davis is probably one of the most accessible people in major championship golf. He is pretty honest about his setups – where they hit and miss. He is concerned about the rough at the Open, though it is only 2 3/4″ in the worst spots and 2 1/4″ in the primary cut. Thomas Bonk in the LA Time reports.

The rough is a combination of Kikuyu, over-seeded rye and poa annua, and that’s what is concerning the USGA right now.

“It’s almost beyond belief,” said Mike Davis, senior director of rules and competitions who is in charge of setting up the course.

Davis walked the course late Monday afternoon and said he dropped about 250 balls in the rough to check the conditions.

Some of the balls sank deep in the grass, some went halfway and some sat right on top of the grass as if they were placed on a tee.

“We’ve never had rough this short, but we’ve never had Kikuyu in the mix,” Davis said today. “My gosh, you could drop two balls only three inches from each other, and one disappears and the other stays right up on top. It’s hard to believe. Is this the U.S. Open or the World Junior Championship?”

The USGA’s philosophy about the first cut of rough is that it wants players to be able to play a shot forward toward the green, but it also wants the rough to hurt distance control. Davis said the USGA also likes the idea of inconsistency of lies in the rough, but at Torrey Pines right now there is too much inconsistency.

Davis said a specific cutting technique could help solve the problem.

Davis has gone on record saying that he expects a winning score that is under par. It also looks like he wants to protect fairness given that the rough is low already. As I have said before, Mike Davis has really impressed me in his tenure. I think his legacy will be shaped some by this week and could turn a new page in the history of Open setups. I hope he fixes his problem.

Saw this report in Golfweek, courtesy of Geoff Shackelford, and was blown away by its content. The USGA is considering shortening a hole. In fact, they are considering making it driveable. On Sunday. With the Open on the line.

Golfweek has learned that U.S. Golf Association will make the 14th hole at the South Course at Torrey Pines a driveable par 4 during the U.S. Open.

At Media Day last week, USGA director of rules and competition Mike Davis surprised the assembled scribes with reference to plans for a reachable par 4 – but refused to say which hole. Speculation immediately turned to the two shortest par 4s, the second and 10th.

Golfweek learned that the fairway toward the green of the par-4 14th hole (which normally plays 435 yards) recently was narrowed. The reason? It’s going to be played as a 277-yard par 4 on Open Sunday, with play proceeding from the forward tee and the hole cut front left on the green. The narrowed fairway approach makes sense for players opting to go for the putting surface. In all likelihood, they won’t even need a driver, and if they do hit it long, they’ll have to deal with a shaved-down rear bank that feeds into the irrecoverable canyon.

If you’ll recall from Oakmont last year, the 17th was driveable also. Jim Furyk wasted his chances at the Open by going for it. Still, it created drama and caused me to think there was hope for the USGA yet. This, and the varying distances on several holes at Torrey Pines in the works, may keep me a big believer and backer of Mike Davis.