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      Max Homa Takes His Star Turn at the U.S. Open

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      The California native had previously played well at Los Angeles Country Club, but first rounds at major tournaments haven’t always gone smoothly. On Thursday, he found his game for a two-under 68.For a decade now, Max Homa has had regrets.A gettable birdie on the Los Angeles Country Club’s sixth hole had eluded him. On No. 8, it took him three putts to find the cup.He finished that round in 2013 with a course-record 61. In his mind, his scorecard could have read — should have read — 59. The U.S. Open, which began Thursday at the course that still haunts one of its one-round masters a little, could allow him to cast just about all of that aside by Sunday night.If Homa can move beyond the past. If he can ratchet down his internal insistence on flawlessness when he plays golf’s most formidable tests. If he can tolerate the pressures and distractions and expectations of being a guy from Los Angeles County who is positioned to star at a U.S. Open just a few traffic nightmares away from the public course he grew up playing in Valencia.“I am good enough to win whatever I want — I’ve decided that,” Homa, who finished Thursday with a two-under-par 68, said in a recent interview. “I need to go out and do that.”Few players have been as good during this PGA Tour season. Homa has won twice, most recently in January at Torrey Pines, and had seven other top-10 finishes, including a runner-up showing at the Genesis Invitational, played at the nearby Riviera Country Club.But the major tournaments have been the scenes of stumbles. He tied for 43rd at the Masters Tournament and fared even worse at last month’s P.G.A. Championship. Last year, the P.G.A. Championship had been the site of his best major tournament outing, a tie for 13th.Homa was in the middle of his group with Scottie Scheffler at three under par and Collin Morikawa finishing at one under par.Harry How/Getty ImagesEntering this week’s Open, though, Homa saw the course as favorable to his game, given his particular skill at high shots and comfort, dating back a decade, with the four- and five-irons that L.A.C.C. can demand.No, he knew, his problem this week would probably not be technical or mechanical. His most pressing dilemma was to settle his mind well enough that he could play a major without punishing himself for this error or that one.“It just feels like at the majors when I’ve done a poor job, I feel like I’ve been trying to be perfect,” he said. “I don’t need to feel and play perfect to contend.”The approach worked well enough on Thursday, the day that has so often frustrated Homa on the biggest stages. His performance tied his best opening round at any major tournament; he first played one in 2013, when he missed the cut at the U.S. Open at Merion.In more familiar environs, Homa notched his first birdie on the third hole. At the sixth hole — a par-4 of 330 yards that can thwart players with a blind tee shot and a green that can feel remarkably tight for a region so familiar with sprawl — Homa made the birdie that did not happen during his fabled Pac-12 Championship round. A bogey at the seventh hole brought him back to one under, before he birdied No. 8, the other source of his could-have-been-better misery. He played the back nine to even par.When he stepped off the course early Thursday afternoon, he was near the top of the leaderboard but trailing Rickie Fowler, who shot a 62, the lowest single-round score in U.S. Open history, by six strokes. (Xander Schauffele soon after turned in the same score: 62, tying Branden Grace’s major tournament record from the 2017 British Open at Royal Birkdale.)Scottie Scheffler, the world’s top-ranked player and a member of Homa’s group, finished his round at three under par. Collin Morikawa, the two-time major tournament winner and another star from Southern California, was one over.Homa played his shot from the 11th tee during the first round.Harry How/Getty ImagesBryson DeChambeau, the 2020 U.S. Open winner, who was in another group, finished his day tied with Scheffler, Paul Barjon and Si Woo Kim.“There are going to be times that people hit it in the rough, and I think the person that’s going to win is going to hit the most fairways and going to make the most putts and also hit it on the greens,” said DeChambeau, who won the Open at Winged Foot the same year Homa went eight over par in the first round. “It’s a simple formula, obviously. But again, you have to execute it, right? That’s the whole point of a U.S. Open.”It is, DeChambeau added, supposed to be rigorous.Homa, of course, reveled in his Thursday even as he cautioned that it was much too early to declare anything close to a victory. He had a Thursday morning tee time, when the course was in the realm of soft, to start. By Friday afternoon, he warned, the place could be hellish.The U.S. Golf Association is hardly known for indulging easy Opens.The association’s devilish concoctions will be Friday’s problem, though. Thursday, with greens that were not exacting and a course receptive to strong iron play, was merely a start.“From the first tee to the last putt, I was very accepting and just looked at today as just a round of golf that will set me up toward the rest of the week,” Homa said after he had finished his round. “I think that they have the old cliché that you can’t win it the first day, you could lose it, and I lose a lot of these things on the first day.”Maybe something clicked these last few weeks as he contemplated how to manage the atmospherics that accompany playing a major tournament close to home.“There’s obviously, in ways, more pressure, but that’s coming from outside expectation that because a championship is in my backyard, quote-unquote, that I should now be a favorite to win,” he said in the interview. “On the inside, it’s just cool.”Homa signed autographs for a group of young fans during the practice round on Wednesday.Meg Oliphant for The New York TimesSo he was concentrating on the simple things, like smiling. What would happen, he wondered, if he treated preparations for the Open as if they were as pleasurable as those for an ordinary tour event with lower stakes?He could do nothing, he acknowledged, to combat what everyone else would think, the cheers that would rumble from the galleries, the groans that perhaps lurked, too.Carefree, or at least as carefree as a professional golfer can get at a U.S. Open, was the strategy.After all, he said, “I’m getting to do something I would have lost my mind about as a kid.”On Thursday afternoon, he recalled, that Pac-12 Championship in 2013 had felt like “the biggest thing in the world.”“This,” he added, “is quite a bit bigger.” More

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      What’s a Barranca? U.S. Open Golfers Hope They Don’t Find Out.

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      The Los Angeles Country Club’s barranca, a narrow gully, winds through the course, providing drainage during rainy season and a challenge to the players.Not many major golf championships have also served as an opportunity for fans to broaden their vocabulary, but this year’s U.S. Open at the Los Angeles Country Club may do just that. Across the four days of the tournament, beginning Thursday, expect broadcasters — and perhaps the golfers — to routinely use a word that may be unfamiliar to many in the international viewing audience.The word is barranca — pronounced “burr-ahng-kuh” — and it describes a narrow, winding, steep-walled gully or river gorge typically found in Southern California landscapes.The barranca on the L.A. Country Club’s North Course comes into play repeatedly during the 18 holes, especially as protection in and around the greens. Errant golf balls that land inside the barranca may be unplayable and result in a one-stroke penalty. In other instances, expect to see competitors descending into the barranca with hopes of rescuing their golf balls. It may be a successful recovery ploy, or it might just provide a good photo op — a golfer submerged several feet below the fairway thrashing away to try to make par.The L.A. Country Club barranca, however, is far from a random curio of the course layout. It serves an important, effective drainage role during rainy seasons and adds a natural, craggy aesthetic to the course design, which originated in the 1920s. By the 2010s, however, the barranca, which meanders throughout the property with tributaries extending in multiple directions, had largely been grassed over. A renovation of the grounds, completed in 2017, by the golf architect Gil Hanse, with his design partner, Jim Wagner, and a design consultant, Geoff Shackelford, restored the barranca to its original appearance — and tactical purpose.Meg Oliphant for The New York TimesMeg Oliphant for The New York TimesIt first comes into play on the second hole, a 497-yard par 4 where players will face a long approach shot over the barranca. The golfers will encounter the barranca five other times on the front nine.At the 520-yard, par-4 17th, Hanse removed several trees so the serpentine barranca would be visible from the tee, reminding players of the danger that lurked. It could test the nerves of the tournament leaders entering the championship’s penultimate hole in Sunday’s final round.“The barranca just flows throughout,” John Bodenhamer, the chief championships officer of the United States Golf Association, which conducts the U.S. Open, said on Wednesday. “There’s a brilliance to how it is used.”Bodenhamer added that the barranca had three feet of water running through it when he visited the site in March. The water was still as high as two feet last month. But with a limited amount of rainfall in June, Shackelford said on Wednesday, the barranca was now mostly sandy or dry, a condition that was expected and desired.“You’ll see players playing out of them — that’s how they were intended,” Bodenhamer said. “You’ll see a lot of heroic shots, a lot of excitement. The barranca is just magnificent.”And maybe educational, especially to those hoping to add to their vocabulary.The barranca snakes through the course, including near the fourth green.Meg Oliphant for The New York Times More

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      Our Golf Reporter Didn’t See the PGA Tour-LIV Golf Deal Coming, Either

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      The announced deal to drastically change golf took nearly everyone by surprise.Times Insider explains who we are and what we do and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.Alan Blinder’s plans blew up around 10 a.m. last Tuesday.Mr. Blinder, who covers golf for The New York Times, had just settled in at his home office when he received a heads-up from a source with some gobsmacking news: The PGA Tour and LIV Golf, the insurgent league bankrolled by billions of dollars from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, had agreed to a partnership, suspending a bitter and costly struggle for supremacy of men’s professional golf.“I shouted down the hall to my wife that LIV and the PGA Tour were joining forces, and that I probably wouldn’t be around for dinner,” Mr. Blinder said in an interview. “And then I got to work.” He barely left his desk for the next 13 hours.Below, Mr. Blinder shares how he pivoted from shock to covering the news, the implications of the deal beyond sports and the questions he still has heading in to the U.S. Open, which begins today at the Los Angeles Country Club. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.How surprised were you?It was one of those things that people thought was a distinct possibility at some point in the future, but all the reporting we had done, all the signals were that the tour and LIV were preparing to fight each other in court for the foreseeable future. There was a monstrous case in a federal court in California involving contract interference and antitrust law. And suddenly that was all set to vanish.Who was the first person you called?My editors, to tell them that their day was about to get blown up, too. We published an article reporting the news less than 10 minutes after I told my editors, and that soon grew into live coverage. Once the news was published, I tried to figure out, in detail, what on earth had happened and what it meant. Because the announcement was steeped in legalese and jargon, I spent the rest of the day on the phone with sources and experts both inside and outside of golf just trying to understand what this framework agreement meant.Why is this happening now?The most significant factor is that the PGA Tour was under increasing financial strain. I’m not saying the tour was going to go broke tomorrow, but I think the tour realized it was in an exceptionally expensive fight that was not going to get any easier. Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund has gobs of money, but it wasn’t entirely smooth sailing from its perspective, either. LIV had faced some pretty significant setbacks in court.Who stands to benefit the most from the deal?It depends on your perspective. The PGA Tour is arguing that it’s going to have a majority of the board seats and its commissioner, Jay Monahan, as the new company’s C.E.O. Its supporters are insistent that they still control the game of golf, that they are the majority stakeholder in this endeavor. But the Saudis have significant influence. The governor of Saudi Arabia’s wealth fund, Yasir al-Rumayyan, is going to be this new entity’s chairman, and the Saudis have extensive rights to invest in this partnership. How this actually looks going forward remains to be seen.Will we see a loosening of PGA Tour standards to align more with the LIV Golf version of the game, which includes music at events, looser dress codes and no cuts of golfers?The PGA Tour is saying that it still has control over all the competition and play. We’re not expecting the overarching rules of golf to change, in part because the tour doesn’t control them. Could you see some elements of LIV borrowed and integrated into the PGA Tour? Perhaps. The PGA Tour is trying to appeal to a younger audience and broaden the appeal of the game.There have been vows from Washington to slow or stop the deal — or, at least, make it very uncomfortable for golf executives. What are the odds that lawmakers will succeed in blocking the deal?A lot of experts expect the Justice Department to go to court to try to either block the deal or insist upon changes. This is also somewhat unusual because it’s not like this deal was announced last week and suddenly the Justice Department was intrigued by pro golf. Their antitrust folks had already spent months and months and months looking at professional golf. So they have a bit of a head start if they really want to scrutinize this deal.Why should people who don’t follow golf care?This is a golf story, but it’s a story that could play out in other sports going forward. Is it possible that we will see Saudi Arabia or other wealthy states try to make their mark on other sports?This is not just a story of sports, or business, or geopolitics. It’s a story that includes all of those different threads and more. We had a big article in Monday’s paper that had four bylines on it, and only two of them were the bylines of sportswriters.What are the biggest questions you have going forward?Beyond tour memberships and where you play, how does golf kind of take a breath after all this tumult? The golf industry is a pretty small world. A lot of people know one another well and have known one another for a long time, so they’ve really been shaken up over the last year. So one of the big questions is, when do all these wounds get patched up? More

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      U.S.G.A. Steadfast in Plan to Curb Pro Golfers’ Driving Distances

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      Players are objecting to a proposed change from golf’s rulemakers to use new balls, but the U.S. Golf Association said Wednesday it would not abandon the plan.The United States Golf Association acknowledged Wednesday that it had heard ferocious opposition to its proposal for professional players to use balls that travel shorter distances — but it also signaled no interest in abandoning its ambitions to rein in equipment in the next several years.The association and the R&A, a governing body based in Britain, had in March proposed a rule that they estimated could trim top golfers’ tee shots by an average of about 15 yards. Framed as an effort to preserve the sport and the relevance of many of its finest courses, the proposal provoked a backlash among hard-driving professionals, who are routinely hitting tee shots at distances that were all but unimaginable only a few decades ago, and equipment manufacturers, who relish selling weekend duffers the same balls the stars strike at events like this week’s U.S. Open.“Our intent is pure; it’s not malicious,” Fred Perpall, the U.S.G.A.’s president, said at a news conference at the Los Angeles Country Club, where the Open will begin on Thursday. “We’re not trying to do something to damage anyone. We’re thinking about all the good that this good game has given us, and we’re thinking about what is our responsibility to make sure that this game is still strong and healthy 50 years from now for our children’s children.”The debate about distance in golf has played out for years, with executives increasingly irritated with stopgap fixes, like redesigning holes to accommodate the game’s most potent hitters. Some of the sport’s retired greats, including Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player, have pressed golf’s rule book writers to take blunt and urgent action.“Not everybody’s got the ability to go buy the golf course next door, like you do at Augusta,” Nicklaus said in an interview with The New York Times at the Masters Tournament in April. “You can’t just keep buying land and adding. We used to have in this country probably a couple of thousand golf courses that could be tournament golf courses. Today, we maybe have 100.”In the 2003 season, PGA Tour players recorded an average driving distance of about 286 yards, with nine golfers, including Phil Mickelson, Vijay Singh and John Daly, typically hitting at least 300 yards off the tee. So far this season, the tour’s average driving distance stands at nearly 298 yards. Some 91 players — up nearly 10 percent since the U.S.G.A. and the R&A released their proposal — exceed 300 yards on average.Under the plan, balls that travel more than 317 yards when struck at 127 miles per hour would generally be banned.The U.S.G.A. and the R&A are gathering feedback about their proposal, which would not take effect until at least 2026 and would be classified as a model local rule, empowering individual tours and events to adopt it. The U.S.G.A. and the R&A would almost certainly impose the rule at the events they control, including the U.S. Open and the British Open, two of the four men’s major championships.But other golf power brokers, including the PGA Tour, have not embraced the plan, and many of the game’s biggest stars have openly resisted the thought of deliberately curbing distance.Even those who have been receptive to the prospect of making balls seem a little less like long-distance missiles have urged golf’s leaders to have a consistent standard throughout the game, without differences for top-tier professionals.Under the plan, balls that travel more than 317 yards when struck at 127 miles per hour would generally be banned.Desiree Rios/The New York Times“I just don’t think you should have a ball for the pros that might be used some tournaments, might not be used some tournaments, then amateurs can buy different golf balls,” said Matt Fitzpatrick, who won last year’s U.S. Open. “I don’t think that would work.”Tour players recently met privately in Ohio with U.S.G.A. officials and manufacturers to discuss the proposal, and Patrick Cantlay, who is No. 4 in the Official World Golf Ranking, said this week that “tensions were high” in those sessions.“Seems like golf is in a good spot, and doing anything that could potentially harm that would be foolish,” Cantlay said.Mike Whan, the U.S.G.A.’s chief executive, said Wednesday that he was sensitive to the concerns bubbling up from players and suggested that the governing bodies could tweak their proposals in the months ahead. But he emphasized that the U.S.G.A. is also concerned about the millions of golfers who are not professionals and neither he nor Perpall indicated plans for a wholesale surrender.“If you’re going to take on significant governance decisions that you think are going to help the game be stronger in 20 and 40 years, you can’t expect everybody to like those decisions, and that’s part of governance,” Whan said. “You have to decide whether or not you can stand up for what you think is the game long-term, knowing that maybe 20 percent or 30 percent or 50 percent like it and the others don’t. But I think the feedback process is important and it makes us better. Even when we don’t like the feedback we get, it makes us better.”Whan and Perpall’s impassioned defense unfolded as one of golf’s most influential figures, Jay Monahan, the PGA Tour commissioner, was absent from the U.S. Open course. The tour disclosed late Tuesday that he was “recuperating from a medical situation” and that two other executives, Ron Price and Tyler Dennis, had indefinitely assumed day-to-day oversight of the circuit’s operations.The announcement that Monahan had stepped back followed seven days of turmoil in professional golf. Last Tuesday, the tour announced that it planned to partner with Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, the force behind the LIV Golf league that upended the sport, after months of depicting Saudi money as tainted. Monahan, who helped to negotiate the deal, was criticized as a cash-hungry hypocrite, but he has retained at least some crucial allies inside the tour.“Jay is a human being,” Webb Simpson, the 2012 U.S. Open winner and a member of the tour’s board, said in an interview on Wednesday. “Golf is a game, and oftentimes, we make golf into something so much bigger than it is and we dehumanize people.” Perhaps, he said, Tuesday’s announcement would give “people a little perspective.”But Simpson said he knew nothing about Monahan’s status beyond the tour’s initial statement. The tour has declined to elaborate on it or to give a projected timeline for Monahan’s return.Price and Dennis said in a statement that their priority was “to support our players and continue the work underway to further lead the PGA Tour and golf’s future.”In its own statement on Wednesday, the wealth fund “committed to working closely with the PGA leadership and board to advance our previously announced transaction to invest significantly in the growth of golf for the benefit of players, fans and the expansion of the game around the world.” More

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      ‘Different Than What You Expect From a Los Angeles Golf Course’

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      For much of Collin Morikawa’s life, the Los Angeles Country Club was a mystery.The course, designed in 1921 by George C. Thomas Jr. with its North Course restored by the architect Gil Hanse in 2010, was off-limits to most — even Morikawa, a son of Southern California and one of its most promising golfers.But entering this week’s U.S. Open, he is one of a handful of professionals with meaningful experience at the club, which has not hosted a PGA Tour event since 1940 and has never been in the spotlight of a major tournament. Its most recent high-profile competition was the 2017 Walker Cup, an amateur team event played every two years. The United States won that year with a team that included Scottie Scheffler and Morikawa, who first got to play the course when he was a student at the University of California, Berkeley.“It’s demanding — it’s very different than what you expect from a Los Angeles golf course,” Morikawa said in an interview. “The grasses are very different. The West Coast is known for Kikuyu grass and very sticky poa annua greens, bumpy greens in the afternoon. That’s not what Los Angeles Country Club is.”Instead, players will confront a course of Bermuda grass, with bentgrass on greens that Morikawa sees as PGA Tour-like because of their slopes and designs. This year’s Open will include five par-3 holes for the first time since 1947, when Lew Worsham beat Sam Snead in an 18-hole playoff at St. Louis Country Club.Morikawa does not see that as a problem.“Just because there is a heavy focus on par-3s at L.A.C.C. doesn’t mean it’s not going to be a great championship golf course,” he said.No. 6Par 4, 330 yardsThe club’s first five holes pose challenges, but in Morikawa’s mind, it is not until No. 6 that the course offers a fearsome proposition of risk and reward. For the field, it will appear to be an eminently drivable par-4, even with a blind tee shot.But if the greens are as ferocious as the United States Golf Association hopes, good luck. The depth of the green demands perfect distance control, Morikawa said. The ideal landing zone is perhaps five yards in diameter and a bad bounce sends the ball toward the long rough.“Let’s just say it’s 295, 300 yards,” he said. “From that distance, no one is that accurate to hit every drive within a five-yard diameter.” Instead, he said he expects players to layup, often from somewhere between 215 and 240 yards, leaving enough space to the green to test their wedge games. (Morikawa said this week that his caddie had persuaded him to consider going for it instead of laying up.)“When you show up on six, you’re going to be thinking birdie,” he said. “But you’re going to see a lot of bogeys because of how difficult the strategy is going to be.”Nos. 6 and 8 — a par-5 hole measuring 547 yards — at Los Angeles, he said, can be like the second and third holes at Augusta National Golf Club, where players eagerly seek the low scores that are there for the taking.“You want to walk out under par, you have to play smart and you can’t be too aggressive,” he said.No. 9Par 3, 171 yardsFairly few ninth holes are par-3s — the last U.S. Open to have a par-3 on No. 9 was the 2017 edition at Erin Hills in Wisconsin — but the trek back toward the clubhouse includes one Morikawa has judged “deceiving.”A back pin might be merely 200 yards away, but Morikawa warned that the challenge comes from the slope of the green.“With fast greens, if you’re behind the hole, you’re going to be hoping for a two-putt par,” he said. Excessive aggression could very well land a player and his ball in the bunker and poised for a bogey.“For the most part, you’re going to be putting from the middle of the green,” Morikawa said. “You’re going to take four pars and walk out of there very, very happy.”No. 11Par 3, 290 yardsGet over the distraction, on a clear day at least, of the Los Angeles skyline, and face the downhill hole that is the course’s longest par-3. Thanks to its length, Morikawa figures it will be playing somewhere between 200 and 270 yards.“It’s going to be tricky because you have to land it in the right spot,” said Morikawa, who predicted that some in the field would see their tee shots land perhaps 15 yards short of the green and end up dealing with a 30- or 40-yard pitch shot.“If you miss it left, it’s going to run off,” he said of the hole, where the front of the green includes a slope that can fuel headaches if a player is too aggressive toward a back pin. “If you miss it right, it’s going to run off.”Even though the hole is formally a par-3, Morikawa predicted at least some high scores because of its length.No. 13Par 4, 507 yardsWhen Morikawa imagines a quintessential par-4 hole at a U.S. Open, he pictures No. 13: “Long, demanding. You’re going to have a long iron in, the tee box is miles away from the 12th green.”OK, maybe not miles, but it might feel like it after 12 holes of championship golf.And just about everyone — long hitters, short hitters, guys in between — is going to need to keep his tee shot to the left.“Long hitters who hit it right, it’s going to kick down the slope, right into the right rough,” said Morikawa, describing the perils for much of the modern Open field. In Los Angeles, the challenge with the right rough is that it all but forces the player to take a second shot with little visibility.A poor drive, Morikawa said, might require a 5-wood.He is expecting plenty of up-and-downs, and lag putt after lag putt, on a test that has plenty of angles along the way.“It’s a very long hole, but the green in regulation percentage is not going to be there,” he said.No. 14Par 5, 623 yardsThe lone par-5 hole on the back nine, No. 14 first demands that players decide whether they want to try to carry its right bunker. Even with the distances pros are logging off the tee, there will be only a handful who can carry the bunker and will also dare to try it, knowing that they need a drive of 310 yards or so.Edging toward the left, Morikawa said, will leave a player farther from the hole — and “it’s not the easiest layup because the fairways are going to be so narrow.” Being stuck in the rough for a third shot, he said, can be especially troublesome if a right pin is in play for the day because of how the green slopes.“No. 14 is going to require a lot of precision,” Morikawa said. “With 14, if you are a long hitter, you can go for it, push it up there, have a nice little wedge shot and make birdie.”There will be what Morikawa classifies as “stupid bogeys” since the hole is a par-5, ending a four-hole stretch where he senses the Open will not be won, but can be lost.“I think I’ll be pretty happy if I walk out of those holes even par throughout the week,” he said. More

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      At the U.S. Open, the Los Angeles Country Club Has a Rare Collection of Par 3s

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      There will be five of them at Los Angeles Country Club, including one with a stunning view of the city.If there were ever a postcard of the Los Angeles Country Club, it would show the breathtaking view from the tee box on the par-3 11th hole. Downhill and in the distance, the towers of the city skyline frame an elevated, sloping green that’s protected by three bear claw-shaped bunkers.The hole, however, is symbolic for more than its vista. It is one of five par 3s on the North Course, site of the 123rd United States Open that begins on Thursday. Together, these assorted holes are a rare sight, because the typical U.S. Open course features only four par-3 holes.In an era where massive drives are routine, this distinctive feature will test the accuracy of players trying to gauge par-3 flagsticks from as close as about 100 yards or from as far away as nearly 300. The holes form a prized collection of gems as the club hosts its first major tournament.“I think the membership looks at each of them individually because they are so different,” said Richard Shortz, past president of the club and co-chairman of the U.S. Open Committee, of the way club members see the holes. “They’re proud of them all, but they’re not clustered in a way that you can classify all five.”Justin Thomas playing a shot from a bunker on the 15th hole, one of the five par-3 holes at the L.A.C.C.Ross Kinnaird/Getty ImagesOne, though, deserves special classification: the 15th. That’s the hole for aces.Last October, Shortz was playing the course. The 15th hole played at just 78 yards during the 2017 Walker Cup, but on the day that Shortz played, it was playing at 120, because the flag was farther back in the green. Shortz struck a clean hit with his 9-iron and felt like the ball might be close to the hole. But with the pin hidden behind the front bunker, Shortz still took out his putter.When he approached the green, he didn’t see the ball until he peered into the cup, and grinned. It was Shortz’s first hole in one on the 15th.Looking ahead to the Open, he made a bold prediction for a hole that’s listed on the tournament’s scorecard at 124 yards.“I think on 15 we’ll see some holes in one,” said Shortz, who is an older brother of Will, The New York Times crossword creator. “It’s not as though it will be easy. If someone hits the right shot, well, these guys are good.”There have been noteworthy holes in one in the past month: from the Southern California club professional Michael Block at the P.G.A. Championship and from Scottie Scheffler at the Charles Schwab Challenge the following week.Scheffler, ranked No. 1 in the world, may have an advantage because he competed six years ago at the Los Angeles Country Club as an amateur in the Walker Cup, along with Collin Morikawa, who is scheduled to play in the Open.Judging by statistics, the leaders in par 3s on the PGA Tour could also be favorites: The world No. 2 Jon Rahm is ranked first in this category (averaging 2.92 strokes), followed by Max Homa (2.94). Scheffler ranks fifth.In 2013, Homa, then a senior at the University of California at Berkeley, shot a first-round 61 at the Los Angeles Country Club, en route to winning the PAC-12 tournament. Rahm, then a freshman at Arizona State, finished 10th.Still, that limited experience may not guarantee success, said the architect Gil Hanse, who in 2010 restored the George C. Thomas Jr. design from 1928.“The par 3s are not going to favor one particular type of player,” Hanse said. “Here, because you’re talking about accuracy with the wedge versus accuracy with a 3-wood, that’s a big gap to have, to have one player be able to accomplish all of those things.”Jeff Hall, the U.S.G.A.’s championship director who set up the 7,421-yard, par-70 course for the Open, marveled at the “dramatic variety” of these so-called short holes. The two longest par 3s are the 228-yard fourth and the 290-yard 11th.“Just week in and week out on tour there are just not a lot of par-3 holes that play to these kind of numbers,” he said.Each of the par 3s is problematic in its own way, marked by natural hazards and firm, tricky greens.The first par 3 — the 228-yard fourth hole — features a barranca, a dry, sandy ravine typical of Southern California, which slithers like an anaconda through the front nine. At the fourth hole, it lurks in front and then curls back behind the green. There are also two bunkers sloped off the sides of the green.“It’s a smallish target for a long hole with a lot of trouble around it,” Hanse said.In 1927 and 1928, when Thomas worked with Billy Bell to improve the original 1921 design of W. Herbert Fowler, he created some par 3s with flexibility to play as par 4s. The 284-yard seventh hole is one of those. It’s a par 3 for the Open, and it could also play at 264 yards, depending on where the tee is, Hall said.Dustin Johnson, center, lining up a putt on the seventh green at the L.A.C.C. Many have found the green especially hard to read, because of the hole’s topography.Harry How/Getty ImagesThe seventh green, though, will be particularly difficult to read because of the topography. “You feel like the putts aren’t as uphill as they actually are, because your eyes fall to the barranca, thinking it’s more downhill,” Hanse said.Following the par-5 547-yard eighth hole — one of three par 5s on the course, which is also one more than usual for a U.S. Open — players come to the final par 3 on the front nine. The ninth hole measures 171 yards on the scorecard.“It feels like it’s a level hole, but it’s really uphill and deceptive,” Hanse said. “There are four distinct quadrants in the green to move the pin around.”During a tournament, officials change the location of the pin not only to reduce wear on the greens, but also to challenge the players. Hall, who oversees the course setup in his role as the golf association’s championship director, explained that tee boxes at the Los Angeles club also have some room for the tees to move up or back. So, depending on the tee and the pin locations for a certain day, golfers could be dealing with a 30-yard variance on the eighth hole, he said.Doc Redman, Collin Morikawa, and Scottie Scheffler, left to right, played the course during the 2017 Walker Cup. Morikawa and Scheffler are scheduled to return to the course at the Open this week. Harry How/Getty ImagesThe next par 3, the 11th, will test players’ adaptability. From afar, “it’s such an amazing view, sometimes you want to stand there and not hit the tee shot,” said Shortz, the past president of the club.Up close, the 11th offers a history lesson. The green is modeled after Scotland’s 15th hole on the West Links Course at the North Berwick Golf Club. In the 19th century, when a veteran of the Crimean War was playing that famous hole, he noticed that the green protruded in front and then sloped downward right to left; the shape reminded him of a fortress from Sevastopol.The triangle jutting out beside the fortress’s entry point was called a redan. The redan has since become a feature that golf course architects love working into their course designs.For his part, Thomas turned the Los Angeles Country Club’s 11th hole into a reverse redan because the green, 39 yards deep, slopes down left to right. But the downhill carries only halfway through the green because it turns slightly uphill again, Hanse said.“It was actually quite a monumental achievement when you look at how much dirt they moved to create that,” he said. “If you look down the valley, all of a sudden there’s this protrusion of a green that sticks out into it, and that didn’t happen naturally.”The final par 3, the 15th, comes after the course’s longest hole, the par-5 623-yard 14th. Considering the 15th is followed by three stout par 4s, the first two averaging 531 yards and then the 18th at 492 yards, players might be tempted to be too aggressive on the 15th to birdie the hole before facing the rigors of the next three.Beware: Hanse put in a slight hump dividing the front sliver of the green and the main back portion of the 15th.“It’s not OK just to hit the green,” Hanse said. “You have to hit the green within the green in order to not have to worry about three-putting.”Or, like Shortz, you could just bury it in the hole and not worry at all. More

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      The U.S. Open Returns to Los Angeles After 75 Years

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      The last time it was there, Ben Hogan set an Open record. This time, players will have to get used to a course few of them have seen.Lights, cameras, championship golf.As the United States Open comes to the Los Angeles Country Club on Thursday, it will be the first time in 75 years that the championship has been played in the shadow of Hollywood.The last time the event came to Los Angeles, in 1948, it was unforgettable. Ben Hogan won at the Riviera Country Club and set a U.S. Open scoring record that stood until 2000 when Tiger Woods broke it.While Los Angeles has not hosted a U.S. Open since 1948, the championship has often been contested in California. Pebble Beach Golf Links in Northern California is now part of the regular U.S. Open rotation — it’s also where Woods broke Hogan’s scoring record in relation to par — and Torrey Pines in San Diego hosted in 2021. The Olympic Club in San Francisco has held five U.S. Opens.But the private and exclusive Los Angeles Country Club, or L.A.C.C. as it’s commonly known, has long been on the United States Golf Association’s short list of venues it wanted to host a U.S. Open. It’s a classic design, by George C. Thomas Jr., who was part of an influential group of early 20th-century architects. It has challenging and uneven terrain. And it sits in Beverly Hills, with views of the Los Angeles skyline.Walter Hagen teeing off during the Los Angeles Open golf tournament at the Los Angeles Country Club in 1935. Historically, the private club has been reticent about hosting a major championship.Associated PressUntil a decade ago, club leadership had demurred about hosting a championship. But in 2017, the club held the Walker Cup, a biannual match pitting the top amateur players in the United States against their counterparts from Great Britain and Ireland, and that experience changed the membership’s view of opening up its private course.John Bodenhamer, the U.S.G.A.’s chief championship officer, said there wouldn’t be this U.S. Open without that successful Walker Cup. In 2010, as the course was being restored by Gil Hanse, Jim Wagner and Geoff Shackelford, Richard Shortz, then the club president, inquired about hosting a Walker Cup, which the association approved. The players at that tournament loved the course, and that led Shortz, who is an older brother of Will, The New York Times crossword creator, to ask about hosting a U.S. Open.The golf association said yes, but then came the hard part: logistics.“It wasn’t easy from the standpoint of, ‘How do we do this in the middle of Los Angeles?’” Bodenhamer said. “Where do we house the players? How do we manage the traffic? How do we build a city within a city?”Yet the great interest in the course pushed the event forward. In many ways, it’s like inviting the public inside one of the Beverly Hills mansions around the club. So many have tried to steal a glimpse from the road, but few have ever been inside.“I played in the Pacific Coast Amateur when it was at L.A.C.C. in the ’80s,” Bodenhamer, the U.S.G.A. championships officer, said. “I remember setting foot through the door and seeing this place in the middle of Beverly Hills and saying, ‘This is crazy.’ All the celebrity houses on holes. But as I played, it was just so different than anything I’d ever seen.”This year, the golfers who will really know the course are those who have played it before: Collin Morikawa and Scottie Scheffler, who played it during the Walker Cup and qualified for the U.S. Open, and Max Homa and Jon Rahm, who played it during the 2013 PAC-12 tournament. Similar tournament knowledge proved valuable last year for Matthew Fitzpatrick, who won the 2022 U.S. Open at the Country Club in Brookline, Mass., after winning the 2013 U.S. Amateur Championship on the same course.Because few professionals have played L.A.C.C. in tournament conditions, Shackelford is both worried and excited to see how it holds up to the best players in the world.In addition to working on the course restoration in 2010, Shackelford wrote the biography “The Captain: George C. Thomas Jr. and His Golf Architecture,” and is also the author of “Golf Architecture for Normal People”; he said he’s concerned about how players would react to what he considered a nuanced, complicated course.“I’m nervous about what they might say,” he said. “I want them to like the course. I want them to enjoy it. This course has elements that will take some time to get to know. Those who do get to know it will have a good week. Those who don’t won’t.”He has been consulting with the golf association on where to put the pins on the greens and the markers on the tees, but he also recognizes that, at the end of the day, it’s a huge stage.JJ Bennett working on the ninth hole at the Los Angeles Country Club. John Bodenhamer described the club as “this marvelous rural oasis in this urban setting.” Ringo H.W. Chiu/Associated Press“They haven’t really had a good test run,” he said. “The Walker Cup is a great event, but it’s not the same thing. They’ve just never had anything with the quality of players and the number of them.”Bodenhamer said the golf association was confident in the course’s star turn, despite some challenging weather — like more rain than usual — leading up to the event. “We’ve studied all the wind and weather patterns, but who knows,” he said.There’s also a certain liberation and excitement of going to a course so few people know.“I’m excited about the mystery and the allure of what L.A.C.C. means for caddies, fans, viewers,” he said. “People are going to turn on the TV and say, ‘Wow, that’s a lot different for a U.S. Open.’”“L.A.C.C. is this marvelous rural oasis in this urban setting,” he added. “It’s so natural, it’s gnarly.”One player who knows it well is confident the course will hold up and that the players will do well. Stewart Hagestad, a member of the 2017 Walker Cup team and a longtime club member, downplayed the need for local knowledge.“When I was picked for the Walker Cup team, I wanted to be this big brother player,” he said. “The reality is, these are the best players in the world, and their golf I.Q.s are so high that it doesn’t take a lot of trips around the place to understand it. It just comes down to execution.”Hagestad, who won the United States Mid-Amateur Championship twice and almost qualified for this U.S. Open, made one prediction that runs contrary to the Open’s ethos.“L.A.C.C. will have a score lower to par than a lot of people are expecting,” he said. “What makes major championships is weather. On Saturday at the Country Club” in Massachusetts last year, “it was cool and windy. Right now, in L.A., the low temp goes between 56 and 59 degrees and the high is from 68 to 73. The wind is going to blow six [miles per hour] and gust to eight.”Beautiful conditions, but Hagestad did have a warning: If the greens start to glow pink or purple, that’s not Hollywood makeup— its bent grass surface has been sped up beyond what players can imagine. More

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      For Corey Pavin, the Right Club for a U.S. Open Win

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      He took the 1995 U.S. Open when he picked a 4-wood on the final hole and hit a shot that is still remembered.The United States Open, which begins Thursday at the Los Angeles Country Club, has featured plenty of memorable shots over the years. One was the 4-wood struck by Corey Pavin on the final hole of the 1995 Open at Shinnecock Hills Golf Club in Southhampton, N.Y.Pavin, clinging to a one-stroke lead, knocked his approach from about 2225 yards away to within five feet of the pin. He missed the birdie putt but prevailed by two.“The shot of his life,” Johnny Miller of NBC called it at the time.Pavin, 63, who played on the golf team at U.C.L.A., recently reflected on what happened in 1995 and on the course that players will encounter this week.The conversation has been edited and condensed.Where’s the 4-wood these days?The 4-wood is in a nice case in storage at the moment. I had it in a house on display. When we moved, we didn’t have enough room for it.Did you use it after the Open?I used it for a couple more years and then switched to a different club.What options did you consider for the shot?I was carrying a 2-iron in my bag, as well. I said, [to his caddie] “Do you think I can get a 2-iron there?” He said, “No, I don’t. I think it’s a 4-wood.” I said, “I agree.” That was our conversation. It was very short, to the point, with no doubt on what club I should hit.Did you know right away that you were on target?When I made contact with the ball, I knew it was really good. I hit it just the way I wanted to. I had the exact same shot on Friday and hit a 4-wood onto the green, as well. So I had a good picture in my head because I did it on Friday.Did the shot receive so much attention because it was hit with a 4-wood?A fairway wood is somewhat unique to hit a second shot on a par-4 on the 72nd hole. I was 35, had won 12 tournaments at that time and hadn’t won a major, that was a factor as well.“If I had gone my whole career and hadn’t won a major, I would have been bothered by it,” Pavin said.Phil Sheldon/Popperfoto, via Getty ImagesWas it eating away at you that you hadn’t won a major?It was one of my goals, certainly, at that point in my career. I don’t know if eating away is the right way to say it, but I wanted to win a major very badly. If I had gone my whole career and hadn’t won a major, I would have been bothered by it.How do you assess your career?When I started on tour, if somebody had told me, “You’re going to win 15 tournaments with one of them being a major,” I would have told them they were probably crazy. I never had a long-term goal like that. My goal every year was to win at least one tournament, play consistent golf at the highest level I could.Did you play the Los Angeles Country Club when you were in college?We played just a couple of times. It’s a beautiful golf course. I think it’s going to hold its own pretty well.Is there a unique challenge for the guys or is it a typical Open layout?One challenge is that nobody has ever really seen it in tournament conditions. I’m not sure how it’s going to be set up. Chipping out of [the Bermuda rough] is very difficult. And hitting full shots out of it is very hard.Why did the Ryder Cup bring out the best in you?I love the Ryder Cup. The pressure there is 100 times stronger than anything I’ve ever felt. When I feel that pressure it makes me concentrate and focus even better. You don’t get a chance to represent your country very often.Any regrets about your time as captain in 2010?It was a fantastic experience. Of course, I wish we would have won, but I have no regrets on how I went about it. I was as thorough as I could be, gathered as much information as I could and made decisions based on that information. More