PINEHURST, N.C. - Enough talk of unprecedented doubleheaders. It's time to start the U.S. Open. For all the wondering if the course will stand up to two weeks of play, the only thing that counts is that 156 men will have to deal with confounding greens, scruffy sandy waste areas and all manner of ground game. That church bell that tolls hourly as you play the first hole isn't playing a funeral dirge. It's one of those reminders, along with the wind and the occasional toot of a railroad, that you're playing golf in a shrine for the game. Here's what they'll face, hole-by-hole, on Pinehurst No. 2, the Donald Ross masterpiece restored in 2010-11 by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw. Par is 70, with the scorecard indicating 7,565 yards, though the daily setup will be closer to between 7,350 and 7,500 yards.
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Hole No. 10: Par 5, 617 yards
Wide open, fast-running and within reach of many players in two given the relative freedom to swing away off the tee and when coming into the green. The only real trouble comes if a player has missed his tee shot and finds an uncomfortable lie for advancing his ball more than 100 yards. There's also the tendency for lay-up second shots to steer so far clear of the tree line on the second dogleg left that the ball winds up on the outside, where the fairway bleeds out into native scrubby sand.
Hole No 11: Par 4, 483 yards
This starts what might be as strong a run of par 4s as found in championship golf - akin to the last five at Winged Foot-West. From this new back tee, players can't see much more than a field of sandy waste and wiregrass. In fact the ideal line is left of center, near (or past) a deep bunker that's 285 yards out to clear. But that's precisely where the fairway starts necking down. And the right side of the fairway is lined with some of the gnarliest broken ground to be found anywhere on the course.
Hole No. 12: Par 4, 484 yards
Downwind, with a 250-yard carry just to reach the fairway and another 50 yards to get past bunkers on the left, whereupon the landing area narrows and allows the longest drives to run into the sandy waste ground. A deceptive front-right bunker 30 yards short of the green creates a narrow opening into a green that is best approached from the left side of the hole - once again, nearest the bunkers. There's very little room to work the ball in on the ground, as the left side of the approach zone feeds sharply down and away; the right side provides more support, except that a ball landing outside of it to the far right leaves a very awkward up-and-over recovery shot to a green falling away.
Hole No. 13: Par 4, 385 yards
Most of the time for Tour-caliber players, this is a layout off the tee since the fairway dead-ends 260 yards out on the left; the right side of the fairway is so fraught with sandy waste, bunkers and trees that the risk of carrying it all and staying in the narrow part of the remaining fairway is hardly worth the trouble. From there, it's the steepest uphill approach shot on the course, circa 125-145 yards to a very slippery green with a false front and a steep downslope at the back. At least once during the U.S. Open, they'll move the tees up front and play it at around 315-325 or perhaps even only 290 yards, inviting the field to have a whack at it. The trick is to carry it all the way to the green surface, plus another 10 yards to clear that false front. Good luck with that one; it should be fun watching.
Hole No. 14: Par 4, 473 yards
Very tough driving hole, with a Barbie-doll waist of a landing zone 275-325 yards from the tee. With the prevailing wind helping (over the right shoulder), many players will hit less than driver here just to keep it in play. The green, like just about all of them on Pinehurst No. 2, has plenty of size, on average 5,500 square feet. But so much of it is sloped away that the effective landing zone is less than a third of the total surface.
Hole No. 15: Par 3, 202 yards
Another very elusive surface, though the right part of it was flattened ever so gently by Coore and Crenshaw during the restoration to recapture an old hole location that had gotten built up with sand splash and rendered unusable. The trouble here is that the green here provides little support or backstop for an approach shot. Anything less than a perfectly spun approach tends to run through the back.
Hole No. 16: Par 4, 528 yards
One way to make a course difficult is simply to change the par on holes, which is about what they have done here on the longest par-4 on the course and the green that will be the hardest to hit in regulation all week. The hole drifts steadily leftward, with the bold, shorter line of play to challenge the left side. There's very tight ground here, with pine trees and that sandy waste looming the entire way. Anything right of center will reach bunkers 300 yards out, or drift through the outside of the dogleg into more of that scrubby stuff. For all the emphasis upon Pinehurst's mind-bending greens, the course plays U.S. Open tough because the landing areas for these fellows have been narrowed down to define the ideal line of approach in.
Hole No. 17: Par 3, 205 yards
OK, so the course lacks a short-par-3. Except that from this launch pad tee it'll still be little more than a 6- or 7-iron to the only other green on the course that Coore and Crenshaw tweaked. They removed a lot of sand that had accumulated at the front of the green - thanks to protective bunkers there - that had led to loss of the front hole location. They couldn't use it in '99 and '05 but it makes for the best pin position on the green - because it's the tightest, and anything beyond it is a lightning-quick downhill putt. The green tends to tip ever so slightly from right to left - the same direction as the prevailing wind. Recovery is possible from the left side, but from the right side, it's as much a matter of luck as skill. It's very hard to play good golf when your swings thoughts include "no," as in, "Don't hit it right."
Hole No. 18: Par 4, 451 yards
Uphill all the way and into the prevailing wind, which makes the 261-yard carry over the yawning cavern of a bunker down the right side a little more than automatic. Players can carry it, but at 275 yards the fairway starts narrowing down, with more sandy areas right (as well as trees obtruding on the second shot); while the left side ends pretty quickly and runs into thickets of wire grass and native plants anchoring in the sand. The humpback nature of the fairway makes driving difficult, and yet a layup into the upslope will leave an approach shot that's semi-blind from 175 yards-plus out. And the green, famous for the 14-foot putt that Payne Stewart sank to win by a shot over Phil Mickelson in '99, repels any approach that comes up short or on the outside (either side).
