Golf Course Notes
Two Championships, Two Weeks – One Golf Course! How the Staff at Pinehurst Course #2 Pulled It Off By Chris Hartwiger, USGA
H
osting one U.S. Open is a monumental challenge for any golf course. Hosting the U.S. Open and the U.S. Women’s Open on the same golf course in back-to-back weeks is unthinkable. Or is it? The USGA and the Pinehurst Resort and Country Club (in Pinehurst, NC) discussed the possibilities of back-toback championships and concluded that both organizations were up to the challenge. Course #2 at Pinehurst would serve as the venue to crown two Course #2 at Pinehurst no longer has traditional bermudagrass roughs; instead, the rough is composed of sandy areas with wiregrass and many other plant species.
16 • Mississippi Turfgrass • Fall 2014
national champions in consecutive weeks. The U.S. Open would be contested between June 12-15, 2014, and the U.S. Women’s Open would be held the following week, June 19-22.
Goals for the Opens
As the USGA and Pinehurst began to plan for the Opens, goals began to fall into place. First, the USGA wanted to offer similar championship tests for both fields. In other words, if the male competitors were hitting seven irons,
on average, into the putting green on a given hole, the course should be set up so that the women were hitting seven irons, also. Since hole locations and green speed play key roles in the relative difficulty of a hole, a second goal was to use similar hole locations and green speeds for the men and women for each of the four days of competition. Finally, the playing quality and health of the creeping bentgrass on the putting greens needed to be managed through