Pinehurst Test Drive

Michael Bamberger in SI (subscription required) writes about Nick Price's "Test Drive" to help the USGA pinpoint potential Pinehurst problems (take that alliteration!). Bamberger is skeptical about the USGA's insistence that winning scores around par are not the goal.

If there's a great pleasure in being a volunteer USGA committeeman these days, it's not obvious to outsiders. This year the USGA has prepared a sober position paper, available at usga.org, titled U.S. Open Championship Philosophy, a 14-point list describing how the USGA sets up an Open course. The document concludes with a statement that sounds true only in theory: "There is no USGA target score for a U.S. Open. While the final score at some U.S. Open sites will be at or near par, the USGA does not try to formulate a course setup that will only produce a winning score at or near even par." Can you hear the advice of counsel in the preceding two (2) sentences?

USGA officials may have target scores in informal rounds on Open courses in the weeks preceding the championship, but the USGA does not -- we repeat, does not -- have a target score in mind for the world's best players in the championship itself. It says so right on its website.

The story gives some indication that the USGA’s Fred Ridley and Walter Driver are concerned about a Shinnecock repeat. That's in sharp contrast to the recent remarks of Executive Director David Fay.