U.S. Open Players Will Have to Rely on White Dots to Differentiate Greens and Fairways

The greens at U.S. Open host course, Chambers Bay, have been a topic of discussion this week. Sure, the undulations and firmness are impressive and we’ll likely see plenty of crazy breaking putts, but their are bigger issues that could come into play.

Yesterday, in my “groups to watch” post, I included the tweet below that showed a portion of one of the greens that looks terrible.

Stephanie Wei, of Wei Under Par, later tweeted a picture of white dots that the USGA is using to tell where the edge of the greens begin. It’s hard to imagine many players would be thrilled with the fact that they may believe they are on the green and choose to mark their ball when they are actually in the fairway, so the dots will give players an indication of where they can and cannot mark.

We won’t know whether or not this is a big issue until players begin tournament play on Thursday, but Jason Day believes this is the right move by the USGA.

"“I think they’ve done a good job with it really because they’ve put most of them on slopes to where the ball probably won’t stop or won’t roll down or won’t roll away. Sorry, it will roll away, sorry. So with that said — because if you look, you can’t really see where the green is.”"

This will make for some interesting shots around the greens. Chip or putt? With the firmness of these greens, we’ll definitely get to see a lot of creativity with the putter.