Taking Aim

How impressed have you been with the way the USGA has setup the US Open, a tournament you have won, in recent years – and do you think their approach could be a catalyst for change in the way regular Tour venues are prepared?

There was obviously a period at US tournaments, with the exception of The Masters, where the longer and narrower the course and the longer the rough, the better. The more you get punished for a bad shot, the better the tournament’s going to be. There was definitely that attitude, but it’s changed a little bit because I think they understand that short grass can be just as scary as long grass, or even more scary, and way more interesting.

They’re starting to do some interesting stuff, maybe have a short par-4 in there, and starting to see that golf doesn’t have to be about making it as hard as you can. It’s about making it interesting.

The amazing thing for me is that the template has been there for years. The Masters for me, with the exception of a few years when they tried to make it too hard, has been the most entertaining tournament of the year for 50 years. There’ve been some great days at US Opens and Open Championships but purely as a spectacle, The Masters sets the bar every year for entertainment and for finding the best player.

It ticks every box for professional golf yet they’ve almost been going out of their way to set up golf courses the exact opposite of The Masters. Augusta has lots of short grass; you can basically hit it anywhere but you need to find the best angles to approach the greens, which are going to punish you subtly and not obviously. But [elsewhere else] the model is almost the exact opposite to that which is amazing to me.

But with [Chief Executive] Mike Davis at the USGA, there’s definitely been some progress at US Opens over the past four to five years. They've been moving some tees up on par 4s and 5s and not necessarily just covering the course in rough. They now have some short grass.

The quality of the golf course and the quality of the setup almost directly dictates how good your tournament is to play and watch. It’s an underappreciated art but there seems to be a bunch of guys who get to do the setups that are going in the right direction, I think.