A 78-yard par-3 at the U.S. Open? The prospect has players on guard

LOS ANGELES — Shahith Theegala isn’t accustomed to hitting lob wedges off the tee, actually not at main championships. But there he was on the fifteenth gap of Los Angeles Country Club’s North Course Wednesday afternoon, thumping a ball skyward together with his trusty 60-degree towards a goal the measurement of a small yard swimming pool.

His swing ideas?

“Just trying to not knife it,” he stated, laughing, as he strolled the 78 yards from tee to pin. “Yeah, literally — just trying to clip it, get a little spin.”

The fifteenth gap is formally listed as 124 yards for this U.S Open, however all indicators level towards the USGA pushing up the tees for one spherical so the gap will play someplace nearer to 80 yards (aka, what could be the shortest gap in U.S. Open historical past), simply because it did when the North Course performed host to the Walker Cup in 2017.

During that occasion, Doug Ghim, who performed on the U.S. aspect, stated of the fifteenth, “Half the battle was trying to decide whether to use a tee or put it on the ground.”

The different half of the battle is extra sophisticated: the place to land your ball.

The fifteenth inexperienced is formed like a boomerang that narrows because it strikes from again to entrance. When each the tee and flag are again, the gap can play practically 150 yards. But when the tee and flag are up, the gap performs solely half that distance — however to a touchdown space that’s solely seven yards deep. Short misses will discover a cavernous bunker or strip of gnarly tough. Same goes for lengthy misses. Too far left isn’t any good, both. If players go away their tee pictures on the fallacious aspect of a knob that divides the inexperienced, they are going to be left with a treacherous putt up and over the mound and down a slippery slope.

Here’s the level: Yeah, it’s solely an 80-yard flip however you had higher execute a rattling good flip.

“I think the key is not going directly at the pin,” Theegala stated. “You want to try and get it past the hole and to the left.”

He paused, sized up the inexperienced, then added, “I love this hole. I think it’s brilliant.”

Whether all the players can be so enamored, solely time will inform. Birdies can be plentiful, however it’s additionally not laborious to think about a professional’s tee shot bounding off the inexperienced and into the again bunker, resulting in a 5 and a scowl.    

Jon Rahm performed the shorty in the PAC-12 Championship a decade in the past. He stated he remembered hitting “a great shot. Landed a foot from the hole and [went] long into the rough.”

He added: “Very rarely are you going to have a hole that short where the best players in the world are going to be thinking about going 20 feet long left to use that slope to at least hit the green, and that’s something beautiful. It’s a hole that gives you a lot to think about.”

That a lot was clear throughout Wednesday’s apply spherical. As players surveyed the anticipated location of the 80-yard pin, they performed pictures from all instructions: blasts from the entrance bunker, sensitive chips from the tough, snaking putts from above the gap. Sergio Garcia and Ross Fisher spent at least 5 minutes observing the inexperienced’s many subtleties; as they paced round the placing floor collectively, they gesticulated like explorers stating new discoveries.

Practice companions Xander Schaufelle and Patrick Cantlay hit a number of putts every from the far aspect of the knob all the way down to the decrease pin, with each players taking decidedly totally different strains. Cantlay swung his putt out to the proper whereas Schaufelle went left. Incredibly, given the banks on both aspect of the inexperienced, each putts made their method again towards the gap.  

“Fifteen is one of those holes where you can kind of do whatever you want with it,” Scottie Scheffler stated earlier in the week. “It’s really kind of a genius design with the way the green is. I love those little short par-3s. I think that’s the way most par-3s should be, just because there is opportunity for birdie and bogey.”

According to NBC Sports’ John Wood, Rickie Fowler stated he would possibly even lay up. Crazy discuss? Maybe, possibly not. A shaved-down space simply off the decrease a part of the inexperienced leaves a comparatively easy chip or putt again up the slope.

If the USGA does arrange the fifteenth at its mighty-mite distance, it nonetheless received’t be the shortest gap Theegala has performed in competitors. That honor goes to the fifteenth gap at Lakeside Golf Club, simply 10 miles from LACC, the place Theegala performed in the 2019 Southern California Golf Association Amateur.  

“Impossible shot,” Theegala stated Wednesday. “Downwind, 68 yards, I thought I hit I perfect — one-hopped it over.”

No matter. He nonetheless received that week.

Alan Bastable

Golf.com Editor

As GOLF.com’s govt editor, Bastable is answerable for the editorial path and voice of one among the sport’s most revered and extremely trafficked information and repair websites. He wears many hats — enhancing, writing, ideating, creating, daydreaming of someday breaking 80 — and feels privileged to work with such an insanely proficient and hardworking group of writers, editors and producers. Before grabbing the reins at GOLF.com, he was the options editor at GOLF Magazine. A graduate of the University of Richmond and the Columbia School of Journalism, he lives in New Jersey together with his spouse and foursome of youngsters.