Chambers Bay, the course that will welcome golf’s best players and fans for Round 1 of the 2015 U.S. Open on Thursday, is nearly 8,000 yards long with a par of 70.
That’s an incredibly long course, and one of the reasons for the absurd length is a few of the par 4s. The standout of the group is the par 4 14th, which at 546 yards is the longest par 4 in tournament history.
“It feels like you’re hitting off the edge of a cliff,” Andrew Putnam said of the 14th hole in an interview with PGATour.com. “Your tee shot is dropping 40-50 yards, heading back toward the ocean. You pretty much just have to pitch out if you go in the bunker in the middle of the landing zone. They actually made it deeper. It’s impossible. It splits the fairway into two fairways. If you try to play it out safe to the right, you’re going to have a long-iron in. It makes the hole a lot longer.
“Everyone is going to try to hit it down the left side and have it run down the hill. It can roll out like 60 yards down the hill. That hole will usually play into a left-to-right wind, which makes that tee shot hard. There’s a big slope on the right side of the green. If you hit short of the hump, the ball will feed back toward the front of the green. If you land it on the other side, it could run over the green. If you’re long or short, the ball is going to go down some swales into collection areas.”
Four of the five longest par 4s in U.S. Open history are at Chambers Bay, and each of them are more than 500 yards in length. If that wasn’t enough, the greens also are in terrible shape.
Expect a lot of low scores when the final leaderboard is posted Sunday evening.
Thumbnail photo via Michael Madrid/USA TODAY Sports Images
