Baltusrol’s 17th a long story

IT is a sign of the times when a hole measuring 630 yards isn’t deemed long enough. But that’s the story where the 17th at Baltusrol, the venue for next week’s 87th US PGA Championship, is concerned.

John Huneke, general chairman of the championship, explained the reasoning behind stretching the 17th by 20 yards: “It’s always been known as one of the great three shot, par fives, in the world. We really wanted to keep it as a three shot par five. If you don’t hit the fairway on the first shot, it brings the cross bunkers into play. Without the extra yardage, the cross bunkers were really no longer in play for the professional golfer unless he has hit a really bad shot. That’s all we have done, the rest is only tweaking.”

You might have thought that anybody capable of reaching a 630-yard hole in two shots was entitled to due reward but the US PGA see things differently.

However, there are those, world number 2 Vijay Singh among them, who believe the decision was made because some years ago John Daly actually reduced Baltusrol’s 17th to a drive and an iron. Although Baltusrol has played host to one of the major victories that gave Jack Nicklaus as much if not more satisfaction than any other - the US Open in 1980 - and Lee Janzen captured the same title there in 1993, it is not very well-known to the majority of today’s top golfers.

However, defending champion Singh turned up there recently as a guest of the US PGA and not surprisingly much of what he later had to say dealt with the only par fives on the course - the 17th and 18th.

Singh, the highly impressive winner of the Buick Open at the weekend, is clearly in great form and ideally equipped to challenge for a third Wanamaker Trophy. But that doesn’t mean he is enamoured by the 650-yard monster 17th at Baltrusrol.

“At 17, I hit probably my best drive of the day and then I hit my best 3-wood of the day and was still 70 yards from the green,” he reported.

“I then chipped up to about eight feet and holed that one for my first birdie of the day. At 18, I hit a very good drive down the middle, a 3-iron just came off the side of the green and I chipped up and made the putt.”

Asked if anybody could reach the 17th in two, Singh said. “Well, you need some downwind help I think.”

When informed that another twenty yards had been added, Singh answered caustically: “Why did you have to make it longer? One guy [Daly] hit it, that’s why. I hit my best drive there, and the caddie came up to me and says ‘you’ve only got 375 to the middle of the green.’ And uphill, too. Wow. Now, it does help if the ground gets firm and it’s downwind, you would probably be able to get there in two. You can fly it 300 low, 350 yards. You have a chance to get up there but it’s very unlikely.”

As for the course in general, Singh’s game plan seems to be to reach for the driver as often as possible, pointing out that “you’re going to have a lot of long irons. The first is 478 yards and then it’s, you know, 503, 482, 505. You can’t be hitting 3-woods because it just makes the golf course so much harder. The course is not really tight, so if you’re hitting a driver well, you know, why not take it out.”

While Baltusrol measures more than 7,400 yards, which is about the norm nowadays for major championships in the States, it is 400 yards shorter than the Castle Pines course in Denver, Colorado, home this week to the International tournament on the US circuit.

The difference, of course, is that Denver is at altitude and the golf ball flies much further as a consequence. There are no such advantages to be had at a US Open or US PGA, both of whom now set their courses up in pretty similar fashion - long par fours, narrow fairways, thick rough, well trapped and very fast greens. Singh sees it in a similar light.

“The PGA is very similar to the US Open but it’s a little fairer,” he mused. “The fairways will maybe be five yards wider and the rough is not as severe as the US Open. The bunkers are playable. For some reason, the USGA come in and do something to the bunkers where you can’t get any spin. Come Sunday, the PGA greens play the same as they do on a Thursday or a Friday. They still stop, they receive balls the same way. I think the USGA, for some reason, put dryers on Friday night. Come Saturday morning, you just don’t know what happened to the greens; they just changed colour and Sunday is the same way. That’s the big difference. The PGA golf course doesn’t change from Thursday to Sunday.”

It’s John Huneke’s neck that will be on the block if Baltusrol is deemed unfair. For now, though, he’s not for turning or apologising and points out: “Baltusrol has always been a pretty long golf course. We haven’t done a lot of lengthening. There’s two holes where we have added yardage. Specifically, that would be the third hole, which is now playing at 503. We’ve added about 35 yards, or so, to that hole from 1993. And we also added 20 yards, to the 17th. The feeling when the course was originally designed by AW Tillinghast was to give the player the opportunity to hit a driver. What we’ve tried to do in our changes over time is to keep the course playing the way Tillinghast would have wanted it to be played.”

It’s a reasonable philosophy, I suppose, but it also suggests that the courses the top players are now encountering are light years removed from what the average golfer meets on a weekly basis.

There was a time not so long ago when one of golf’s greatest boasts was that we could all play the courses the stars played. That appears to be less and less the case these days.