COLORADO SPRINGS — As with any golf tournament in The Centennial State, how far the ball travels in the thin air will become a math-based conundrum for the players at the U.S. Senior Open Championship this week.
But for the 156 players who tee off Thursday at The Broadmoor, the shots that don’t leave the ground will provide the sternest challenge of both their physical and mental abilities.
“The greens are treacherous,” Padraig Harrington said. “They’re very old school, and when you have those slopes in greens and they get them a little quicker with the heavy rough, it can be difficult.”
All of the players who have chatted with the media ahead of this tournament have talked about how tough the greens are. The East Course at The Broadmoor is not going to play particularly long. It’s currently set up at 7,264 yards — that’s nearly 1,000 shorter than Castle Pines played last year at the PGA’s BMW Championship.
It’s not particularly narrow, as USGA-crafted courses go. But the rough is thick, particularly near the greens, and The Broadmoor is on the side of a mountain.
“The greens are very undulating. They’re fast,” Stewart Cink said. “There’s amazing push from the mountain toward the valley here that sometimes just defies your eyesight. You have to trust what you know to be right. You feel it in your feet when you’re out there. You have to read greens with a lot more of your senses than just your eyes and your memory.
“There’s going to be some putts that just make you look silly out there. So it’s that kind of difficulty. It’s not a brute force difficulty like you see at Oakmont or places like that.”
The players are so sufficiently concerned about the greens this week that it’s not just about the putts. Where the putts are coming from will be critical. That means the second and third shots into the greens will be just as important.
And those shots need to come from the fairway, not the rough, to help give the golfers more control over the placement. Cink likes the advantage that the thin air can provide to the longer hitters but keeping the ball in the fairway will be a key for most of the field.
“If you can get an uphill putt, you can have a go at it. But anything down or from the side, there’s huge slopes and speed issues,” Ernie Els said. “There’s a lot of things we have to battle this week. But we’re playing in the most beautiful environment. You’re not going to find a more beautiful environment than here.”
Afternoon rain on Tuesday and Wednesday cut some practice rounds short but also helped slow down the greens. The weather forecast is for dry days and increasing temperatures into the weekend.
That means no more help from Mother Nature. These greens are going to dry out and speed up. How much the altitude affects how far the ball goes will change more over the course of the day.
The scenery will be spectacular, but so too might be the rising scores when shots go awry.
“Knowing where to hit it, knowing where the right place to miss and then you’re just going to have to be good,” Harrington said. “No matter how good you putt, you’re going to have a lot of putts up and over slopes, so you’re going to have 3-, 4-, 5-footers off your good putts.
“It’s just going to be a relentless week of taking it on the chin, and if it runs 5 feet by, not complaining, and get up there and hit your best putt and get on with it.”
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