PGA Championship still a non-starter

BLOOMFIELD TOWNSHIP, Mich. -- With the 90th PGA Championship being played just outside the Motor City, it must be said that the tournament so far is like a promising-looking car whose engine refuses to turn over.

Sergio Garcia birdies the par-5 12th hole, then sticks his tee shot on 13 to around six feet for possibly his second birdie in a row and a share of the lead. Of course he misses the putt.

Phil Mickelson reaches a greenside bunker on 12 with his second shot, but fails to get up and down, cards a dispiriting par and stays at 1 over.

Here's what the Detroit Free Press printed about its own hometown tournament today:

With Tiger missing in action, unknowns taking the lead, a weather delay and the mayor's jail time dominating the news, the first round was one of the most forgettable in major history.

What it didn't mention was the beginning of the Beijing Olympics, but you get the point.

The Detroit News chimed in with a column by Lynn Henning headlined: "Opening round is very quiet."

The piece cited the depressed local economy, the lack of Tiger and the lack of birdies on a course that recalls not so much a normal PGA but a U.S. Open.

Mickelson was practicing his putting at 10:30 a.m. Friday, well before his tee time, calmly stroking ball after ball for several minutes. He was watched by 14 people, some of them volunteers.

But wait! Mickelson just birdied 13, just one off the lead; maybe this baby will turn over yet.

J.B. Holmes bludgeons Oakland Hills with driver

BLOOMFIELD TOWNSHIP, Mich. -- On an Oakland Hills course infamous for its gnarly rough, the clubhouse leader J.B. Holmes bucked convention by swinging for the fences. Bombing his driver "exactly where I was looking" every time he swung it, Holmes made five birdies and shot a second-round 68 to get to one under overall.

"I hit a couple out there that might've got close to 400 [yards]," said Holmes, who is averaging 337.5 yards off the tee on measured drives this week, first in the field.

He left himself only 65-70 yards to the green on the 435-yard first hole, then reached the par-5 second with a driver ("that was close to 400, probably") and a wedge to 12 feet from the pin. His eagle putt grazed the edge of the hole but wouldn't fall.

Holmes drove the green on the 300-yard, par-4 6th hole and two-putted for birdie, and was left with only an 8-iron to reach the 593-yard, par-5 12th hole in two. He missed the green, but got up and down for birdie. He estimated after the round that he hit driver on 10 of 14 possible holes.

"I played great," he said. "I hit the ball well. I left a few putts out there, but overall it was a very good ball-striking round, is probably the best way to describe it."

 

Rough brushing a 'legit practice'

After a rough go at it in yesterday’s first round, Lee Westwood had a go at the rough, claiming that the maintenance team had made the grass unfairly penal by brushing the blades toward the tees. “I can’t think of a reason why they would do it other than to irritate the players,” said Westwood, after a seven-over-par 77. “[The rough] is five inches long. Why brush it back at us? It makes no sense.”

Actually, it makes perfect sense, says Matthew Burrows, the superintendent of another rough-choked monster, Winged Foot Golf Club. 

“I think it is a legitimate practice, and a really intelligent practice,” Burrows said this morning. “The idea is to have nice, dense upright rough, particularly at a major, and raking the rough provides a good amount of consistency.”

Raking, or brushing, he added, is all but a necessity given the number of spectators, golf carts and maintenance vehicles that trample the grass of a major site throughout the week.

Burrows was not the Winged Foot super when the U.S. Open visited the club in 2006, but he was on the Winged Foot team when the club hosted the PGA in 1997, when, he said, “We definitely had some guys raking up some rough.” 

Steve Cook, the Oakland Hills caretaker, wasn’t available for comment — out brushing, no doubt.

Meditating on the Monster that is Oakland Hills

Oakland Hills (aka the Monster) doesn't draw blood the same way that beasts like Oakmont and Winged Foot do, but it has teeth and claws, and it can hurt you pretty good.

A sampling of quotes and soundbites from Day One of the U.S. Op..., er, I mean PGA Championship.

From Larry Dorman of the New York Times:

Asked to rate the difficulty of the Oakland Hills layout, Rocco Mediate, never at a loss for words, said, "It’s like trying to play Scrabble without any vowels."

From John Hopkins of the London Times:

The PGA of America have made a mistake in the way they have allowed the South course here at Oakland Hills to be prepared for the US PGA Championship. They have set it up the way the United States Golf Association used to prepare courses for a US Open. That means tight fairways, a narrow, no more than six feet strip of first cut rough (what we in Britain call the semi-rough) and then ankle-high, 4-inch rough down the side of each fairway and close to every green.

Furthermore, this year the PGA of America have allowed the greenkeeping staff at Oakland Hills to brush the rough back towards the tees so that balls landing in it will be even more hidden than ever and there will be less chance of any forward momentum. The occasional patches of flat rough have been plumped up ready to catch a wayward shot.

"You can stand on a green and look back down a fairway and see the rough shining at you," Alistair MacLean, Lee Westwood's caddie, said.

Why is this necessary? It is not as if a 7,395-yard golf course with a par of 70 and 135 bunkers and slopey greens that run at 12 on a Stimpmeter is not difficult enough already.

From Len Shapiro of the Washington Post:

Many players said they were almost astounded by how the 7,395-yard course played in the grueling first round, compared with its relatively stress-free degree of difficulty in three previous practice days.

"I was surprised at the transition, how different it was from [Wednesday] to today," said Phil Mickelson, who began with back-to-back bogeys on his first two holes but fought back to finish at even-par 70, including a missed three-footer for one last frustrating bogey on his final hole. "I thought it would be a little firmer and a little faster, but it got a lot firmer and a lot faster. That's going to make it play difficult on the weekend unless we get some rain."

"I just hope they don't lose the greens," added Billy Mayfair, also in with a 70 after holing out a 30-yard chip for birdie from the 17th fairway. "If the wind stays up and the sun stays out and we don't get any rain, we're close."