Player opinion divided by controversial Chambers Bay

The linksy feel of Chambers Bay has not endeared championship organisers the USGA to a section of golfers who prefer the manicured parkland target golf they enjoy most weeks on the PGA Tour.

Nor do they like the unknown quantity it represents having been built just eight years ago on the site of a disused quarry on the shores of the Puget Sound. There has been just one championship staged here, when the USGA staged the 2010 US Amateur, won by Peter Uihlein. Only 11 players from that week’s field are returning this week, including current Masters champion Jordan Spieth and he failed to qualify for the final matchplay stages.

So with very little prior knowledge of the course, players were further irked when the USGA’s executive director Mike Davis, the man responsible for setting up the course this week, further stoked the disquiet by suggesting they should all make the effort to do some homework on Chambers Bay.

“I would contend that there is no way — no way — a player would have success here at Chambers Bay unless he really studies the golf course and learns it,” Davis said a few weeks ago. “The idea of coming in and playing two practice rounds and having your caddie just walk it and using your yardage book, that person’s done (and) will not win the US Open.”

Needless to say, feathers were duly ruffled, not least on the plumage of world number one and 2011 champion Rory McIlroy who asked rhetorically: “What’s Mike Davis’s handicap?”

McIlroy has since played Chambers Bay although he was marked absent from the course on Monday, preferring not to practice in sunny yet breezy conditions with temperatures in the mid-to high 70s Fahrenheit that are likely to remain throughout the week.

PGA Tour pro Ryan Palmer was another who had checked out the course and the Texan had not liked what he had seen, taking particular exception to the potential set-up and the USGA’s ability to vary hole lengths considerably thanks to the exceptionally long tee boxes installed by architect Robert Trent Jones Jr.

“(Davis’s) idea of tee boxes is ridiculous,” Palmer said. “That’s not golf. I don’t care what anybody says.”

One golfer’s idea of a design or set-up flaw is another’s cause for admiration of course and as a hometown player Ryan Moore, 32, could be forgiven for being a cheerleader. Born and raised in nearby Tacoma, where his father owns a driving range, four-time Tour winner Moore, who owns a golf shoe company called True Links, has a clear attachment to Chambers Bay, although he admitted last night even local knowledge can’t prepare for the whims of the USGA.

“They can do so much with the tee boxes here and make holes just play completely different day-to-day,” Moore said. “So I think for all of us, we’re kind of preparing and taking guesses, but until Thursday happens, it’s so hard to tell where they might go.”

As a regular at the course, world number 33 Moore said he has seen many of his fellow pros take heed of Davis’s warning. “I saw a lot of guys out here very early in the week (last) week. I was out here Wednesday and I was not the only person on the golf course. There was quite a few other guys out there playing and practising. So I think anytime you have a completely new golf course that no one’s played, there’s definitely going to be guys coming quite a bit earlier.”