Pinehurst No. 2 takes center stage at the 2024 U.S. Open. The First Cut crew breaks down the course.
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ABOUT THE SHOW: The First Cut brings you everything you need to know in the world of professional golf. Nearly every day Rick Gehman, Kyle Porter, Mark Immelman, Greg DuCharme, Sia Nejad and Patrick McDonald bring you the best analysis in the game. From DFS to betting previews, interviews and recaps… everything golf is on the table when you listen to The First Cut.
in its history Pinehurst number two has played incredibly difficult uh it did in 2014 it has historically Troy if you want to share my screen I’ve got the yardages and holes that it will play to for this week apart 70 over 7500 yards Greg but there’s kind of a lot to unwrap here you know we’re already hearing on Monday some of the pressers about how fast these greens are and how diabolical they are and how on The Edge they are I mean this is potentially setting up for Carnage again yes um and there’s a couple reasons for that one you’re coming in with some really long clubs at times I’m actually curious about how the distance is going to play Because when it’s this firm and fast the fairways are really fast too and and I actually think without any rough there there are two rough there are two grass cuts on this property Fairway cut and green cut there’s no fringe there’s no surround um like uh you know aprons chipping aprons it’s two cuts of moh height green and Fairway which is fascinating but I I do think in a way since it will be firm it really brings in a lot of the shorter hitters as well um I think you lose some of that element of well if you’re in the rough and you got Club head speed you got shorter clubs in the ball carries farther so the total distance is farther a lot of that stuff we typically talk about in a US Open goes away here at Pinehurst I think that brings a lot more players into the mix also yeah Rick when scores get closer to par I also believe more players enter the mix uh with the potential to win on this on the spectrum of US Open venues or at least of of recent years Wings foot kind of on one end of the spectrum I think this course number two on the other end of the spectrum right you talk about lack of rough I mean that uh if you’re not playing out of the fairware you are playing out of native area Sandy spots Wire Grass which without that even that first cut balls will will roll through into that stuff it is not a thick 4 inches of rough Bryson strongest man prevails type of major championship not at all and when you miss Fairways you know I was talking to Troy a little bit about this beforehand I think there are some pluses and minuses so one of the things that happens is you have an opportunity for recovery that would be a positive so a Miss Fairway doesn’t necessarily mean death right you have there’s a chance that you’ll be fine there’s a chance you’re not on the other end of the spectrum one that I’m not sure how I feel about and at this point I’m not crazy about it um it is either you’re fine and you can go for the green or you’re not and you’re chipping out and there’s no decision like the the rough brings in this decision can I get a six iron on this if I do is it going to jump is it going to come out dead do I need to Club up or Club down um a lot of those decisions are taken away that being said considering that to be a negative it does fit in with the style of the golf course you may have just a terrible angle you may have no shot right this course was designed with the purpose of width because in order to attack the greens you had to come in from a certain spot the challenge isn’t necessarily the lie you’re going to get like it is at say a winged foot so that creates a a very different but still a very Stern test because it it really ultimately all comes down to what happens on the greens right so to just so that you could visualize what Greg is referring to when you’re missing the Fairway um you can be in a Sandy spot with uh kind of a bare lie access to the back of the golf ball no problems from there or you are in a spot where these little Wire Grass plants are either impeding your uh club or including impeding the ball getting to the green and it’s kind of like one or the other it’s not like a oh it’s like a video game Greg where you’re in the rough it’s like an 80% R you know 80% 70% it’s like it’s like 100% power or zero percent power yeah yeah I mean you could end up in a bush yeah right you could end up with taking an unplayable um and and the a very similar shot could end up with a perfectly clean swing which is it definitely brings in a mental challenge as well which is not in the decision but it’s in the ability to handle the fact that hey I I’m I might get lucky I might not and just because I’m having a tough day off the tea it doesn’t mean I’m going to get penalized um I and I could be penalized severely I could have a great day off the tea and be penalized severely so there’s a lot of elements of this setup I think bring in a lot more players in the field than we’ve seen in pass us opens we we’d also be remiss if we didn’t talk more about those greens because they they will play a huge story this week um you’re going to hear the word turtleback turtleback greens you’re going to hear that repeatedly the two words of the week wire grass and turtleback now um what that means Greg essentially they’re they’re 6,000 square feet on average they’re rather large but effectively much smaller because everything is rolling off we heard even the first or second press press conference of the week Windam Clark was saying about how much um how much break you had to play he said a couple of guys in his group had putted off the green between between the speed the undulation and the way that they are uh complexed to create a lot of tricky situations yes I mean you can get on some fine lines and this is the reason why there doesn’t need to be any Fringe because the edges of the green you know if you think about what you saw at mirfield Village there’s uh let’s take some of the false fronts that you have there there’s a green and then there’s Fringe and then there’s an apron and that all kind of rolls off but the the rolloff area doesn’t start at The Fringe the rolloff area starts in some cases near the middle of the green right and so there doesn’t need to be this Variety in the cut because the ball will have enough momentum to roll through the little uh lip that you get from Fairway cut to Green cut uh and that is a a very interesting factor it’s also why angles become a rather important element in this you get on the wrong side you got to carry a bunker a green becomes really shallow and on the other side is a is simply just a fallof and it once it falls off there’s nothing to stop it right and and so you end up with difficult very demand Landing small areas to land your ball in on approach shots um and then the last thing Rick when you get into short game you have a lot of options you can use any club in your bag assuming there’s no bunker in your way or you’re not in the bunker um which also brings a lot of different styles into play Martin kimer notoriously used putter everywhere off the green we saw uh during his Monday practice round Tiger Woods was hitting everything in his back except wedges almost and except P excuse me except putter he was hitting a lot of four irons that he was just kind of spinning up there yeah there’s there is not one way to play this course Greg so so that’s why um you know looking back at Wings foot and I use Wing foot as an example because I think it’s the other end of the spectrum right that leaderboard ended up being built from one specific type of golfer this could be a wide variety of golfers between the luck um off the te and on the approach shot the options of how to get to the green the options of how to get from Green side to on the green it seems like there is going to be a a lot of different guys who could get this done wide open completely wide open and we’ve seen that before right you have uh Martin kimer I’m not sure there’s a way to classify him as a player like I don’t know if you’d say oh well you know it’s certainly not like Henrik senson who’s also gotten in the mix here oh great ball Striker um Dustin Johnson who has finished well here great ball Striker great driver of the golf ball you look at a Michael Campbell similar to Martin kimer I’m not sure how you’d classify him as a player uh as far as Elite skill sets are concerned um you have a Phil Mickelson you have an Eric Compton you have a Ricky Fowler you have a lot of variety in the types of players um you know Jason Gore get these these guys getting in the mix come from all different styles of play which is um there’s definitely an element of that that is pretty darn cool it makes our job a little tricky um a little challenging tonight because it is so wide open
