DUBLIN, Ohio – Players in this week’s Memorial Tournament have been forced to familiarize themselves rather quickly to a brand new golf course after a complete renovation by designer and builder Jack Nicklaus.
New bunkers, expanded tees, the addition of a SubAir system, rebuilt and – in some cases – repositioned greens have all added polish to a Golden Bear layout that was already a gem.
But one feature of the course felt all too familiar.
The rough.
“I felt bad for the (amateurs) today,” 2018 Masters champion Patrick Reed said Wednesday. “When they got in the rough, they just kind of looked down and the first reaction was to look at me and ask what do I do. And I’m like, ‘Guys, it’s a hack out.’ It’s take a wedge, hit it sideways for them.”
It isn’t easy for the professionals, either.
“I haven’t seen rough like this really ever,” Reed said. “My first practice round I played I just played the front nine on Monday and I missed the fairway by maybe a yard on hole 6 to the right and Kessler (Karain, his caddie) and I spent at least five to seven minutes searching. We couldn’t find the golf ball. And it is that brutal, that thick, that nasty.
“I’ve hit a couple shots out of the rough this week. You can get yourself an OK lie if it gets kind of in a little area down grain that you might be able to advance it to the green. But a lot of times it just sits there, and you look at where you want to play your third shot from and try to get up-and-down.”
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Reed said it’s imperative to hit fairways and greens this week, which also will be the recommended approach in the U.S. Open at Torrey Pines in San Diego in two weeks. Reed won the Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines earlier this year.
“At the end of the day, it’s Torrey Pines. You have to hit the fairway, you have to hit greens, you got to make putts,” Reed said. “And any time you’re playing a U.S. Open you know how penalizing the rough’s going to be. So you got to have full control over your golf ball and when I won back there earlier this year it was the same thing, you hit it in the rough you’re going to pay a penalty for it. So you have to go and hit fairways and have to attack the golf course and I feel like if I do that, then I feel like it would be a good test.”