Jason Day fizzled on his home course last week.
Jordan Spieth was a total flop on the weekend at The Memorial.
Rory McIlroy made a bold move, he changed back to a conventional putting grip and outplayed both of those guys.
In fact, McIlroy finished just two shots out of the playoff between Will McGirt and Jon Curran after he posted round of 71-66-70-68. The biggest news surrounding McIlroy was the fact that he switched back to a conventional putting grip, ending his experiment with the left-hand low grip.
All three of the players at the top of the world rankings will be getting in some early U.S. Open prep at Oakmont rather than showing up this week in steamy Memphis for the St. Jude Classic.
Oakmont will present the field with a formidable challenge and you can bet that those three know it.
The greens are the big deal there. There have been rumors of the speed getting up to 14 on the Stimpmeter.
Jack Nicklaus had his own observation on that.
“Nobody will finish,” Nicklaus said quickly. “If they’re truly at 14, they won’t finish. It would be a really tough golf course at that speed.”
And therein lies the dilemma for the U.S.G.A. Slow play is the enemy of all golfers yet in their flagship event, the U.S.G.A. becomes the poster-child for slow play.
It remains to be seen exactly what the setup will be.
The one thing the U.S.G.A. should do is re-introduce some penal rough. The players hit it so far now that without that, they just blast away and take their chances.
