If it hasn't happened before in an Open, it's probably happening June 18-21 at Chambers Bay.
1. IT'S THE FIRST U.S. OPEN TO BE CONTESTED IN A SAND BOX. Chambers Bay lies in an old sand and gravel pit on the western edge of the Tacoma, Wash., suburb of University Place. It's a tilted bowl, open on the west, with railroad tracks and gorgeous Puget Sound beyond. To the east is a high, long cliff. Atop its rim is Grandview Drive, where rubberneckers can stand with binoculars and scout for Rory, Phil Co. some 80 feet below.
The pit was first mined in the 1890s, and over the next century it's said to have provided 90 percent of the material used to create the skyline of Seattle, 40 miles north. Lucky for golfers, it was mostly gravel--not sand--that was removed. After the Pierce County wastewater district bought the 900-acre site in 1992, mining continued until 2001, after a pit-bull prosecutor named John Ladenburg was elected as the chief county executive and decided the waterfront property should be redeveloped for public recreation, including ball fields, hiking trails and a golf course.
In 2003, the county issued a bid to design and build the course, and 55 firms responded. Those who walked the site were blown away, not by winds off the sound (which are common) but by the texture of the soil: pure sand, the ideal surface to grow tight turf, remove intense rainfall, and provide bounce to every golf ball and spring to each step.
This will not be the first U.S. Open played on sandy soil. Shinnecock Hills on Long Island has been an Open site as far back as 1896, as recently as 2004 and will host again in 2018. But Shinnecock consists of holes that were staked along tree-dotted sand hills, following lines of least resistance. Chambers Bay was dotted with piles of mining spoils, free to be sifted, shifted and molded to creative whims. A sand box, in which 1.5 million cubic yards were pushed around.
2. IT'S THE FIRST COURSE DESIGNED SPECIFICALLY TO HOST A U.S. OPEN. In January 2004, Ladenburg and an advisory committee interviewed five finalists. They were Robert Trent Jones II (a firm consisting of partners Robert Trent Jones Jr. and Bruce Charlton); Hurdzan/Fry Design, at the time creating Erin Hills, which will be the Open site in 2017; Bob Cupp, who designed the 36 holes at Pumpkin Ridge near Portland, long considered a front-runner for an Open; Phil Mickelson, at that point yet to win a major; and local favorite John Harbottle III.
Ladenburg notified each firm that a U.S. Open was his goal, and that he wanted a links-like course. So each of the five proposals envisioned a British Open-like layout. The recommendations of the advisory committee were not unanimous. Ladenburg, who had the final say, selected the Trent Jones firm.
What was the determining factor? It was not, as has been widely reported, that the Jones team concluded by handing each committee member a metal bag tag, embossed with the Pierce County logo and the words "Chambers Creek" (the working title of the project at the time) and "U.S. Open 2030."
"That was a cute gesture, but it wasn't a factor," Ladenburg says. "Besides, they got it wrong by 15 years."
What swayed Ladenburg was the vast global experience of Trent Jones Jr. He'd done links designs before, in California and abroad. None of the others had.
From day one, the pressure was on to create a course good enough to attract the Open. Leaving nothing to chance, Charlton soon spoke to Ron Read, then a regional director of the USGA, who in turn contacted Mike Davis, now the executive director. When construction started in January 2006, Davis and Read walked the property with the designers. "This has potential," Davis said. "Don't screw it up."
3. IT'S THE FIRST ROBERT TRENT JONES JR. DESIGN TO HOST A U.S. OPEN. Hard to believe that in a hugely successful career of over 50 years, with 300-plus designs and redesigns to his credit, Trent Jr. (or Bobby, as most call him), never had a course that even sniffed a U.S. Open. For Bobby, 75, this Open is a lifetime achievement award of sorts.
But like Amish barns and children everywhere, it takes a village to raise a golf course, and Bobby is generous in sharing credit for the collaborative design. "Everything was debated," he says. "Constantly. Sometimes with great passion."
Equally hard to believe is that Chambers Bay is a Trent Jones Jr. design. It bears no resemblance to anything he has previously produced. Chambers Bay is ragged, jagged, rustic and unkempt, seemingly unfinished in some corners and purposefully quirky in others. Flowery bunkers that Bobby first sketched were replaced by massive sandy waste areas, inspired by Pine Valley, he says, to fit the scale of the site. They built enormous fairways, some over 100 yards wide, but full of trapdoors, false promises and awkward angles into impossibly complex greens.
At his age, Bobby will never match his famous father's Open record. Robert Trent Jones Sr. was the original "Open doctor," with nine U.S. Opens on courses he remodeled, starting with Oakland Hills in 1951, and four on original designs: Congressional, Bellerive, Hazeltine and Atlanta Athletic Club.
But Chambers Bay does put Bobby 1 up on his equally famous brother, Rees, the second Open doctor, who has treated 10 Open venues thus far, but none of his design. (Although Rees says his extensive remodeling of Congressional and Torrey Pines makes them tantamount to his designs.)
The site circa 1963 (inset, with Mount Rainier in the background) before being transformed into an Open course.
4. IT'S THE FIRST ALL-FESCUE U.S. OPEN COURSE. The fescue turf, ideal in a maritime climate, is common on the links of Scotland, Ireland and the English coastline, but not on courses in America.
Today, everything could be mowed at greens height if desired. For the Open, the highly contoured greens will be mowed at .18 inches, which will translate to a Stimpmeter reading of 12, and there will be noticeable grain. There will be a belt of fescue rough at about three to four inches (narrowing some of the widest fairways to 40 or 50 yards), then taller stuff farther out.
"The beauty of fine fescue, besides needing less water and less fertilization than other grasses, is that it's the least tacky grass I know of," Davis says. "You get a wonderful bounce on it."
http://www.golfdigest.com/golf-courses/2015-06/us-open-preview-chambers-bay-whitten
