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Nå må snart en europeer vinne, får tippe Darren Clarke!

Hvor kan man satse peng på slikt?

Setter penga på John Daly

www.centrebet.com fex, ladbrokes, unibet, nordicbet osv har sikkert også golf...

http://www.expekt.com

Penga går på Goosen. Han er i slag, roughen er høy og han har en siste runde i US Open å hevne....

Tiger will not even go close on this one. I heard that Vijay was up playing the course a few weeks ago.

The fairways are ten yards thinner this year than when they played the US Open there in ...was it '93?

There is now irrigation in the rough as well so as Sam said the rough is even thicker as well.

I need to find some more info before tipping..

Brian

...Tiger, Colin Montgomerie, Sergio Garcia eller John Daly vinner

Here is Paul McGinley's take on the set up. Maybe I am going to be wrong about Tiger...


McGinley’s Baltusrol blast


PAUL McGINLEY last night blasted the USPGA and others who set up their golf courses to suit the game’s longest hitters.

The 38-year-old Dubliner has arrived for the USPGA fresh but hardly eager after a two week family holiday in Barbados fearful that a golf course playing every inch of its 7,392 yards will deprive him of a fair chance of emulating last year's share of sixth place.

McGinley is scathing of the way authorities seem to think keeping scores at an appreciable level means adding hundreds of yards to courses never designed to be played at such exorbitant lengths. In doing so, they have got it sadly wrong if they think the way to curb Woods et al is to stretch holes such as the 17th at Baltusrol to 650 yards.




"I finished sixth last year in the PGA, but I'm a great believer in horses for courses", he declared.

"Last year's course was fast, runny, windy, Irish style. This is a long, wet slog, the longest course I've ever played. I think there are four par fives over 500 yards. I've played well on fast, running, firm greens. Dubai and Wentworth I play well, Whistling Straits last year was a fast running golf course. This place is not suited to me although that is not to say I can't play well. Nowadays we play a lot of courses like this, particularly in America. They've made the same old mistake, gone for length instead of subtlety. Length, length, length, that's not what the game is about and still they're going to have good scoring here this week because the greens are soft.

"A fellow blocks a drive and it pitches two yards from the edge of the fairway and it stops dead. When the fairways are firm, he'll be coming out of the rough and trying to control a shot to a rock hard green. It ain't going to happen. This week, the guys will be able to power it out of the rough and stop it on the soft greens. I've gone on record before, if they're going to try to curb the scoring and get it so that everybody can compete, they need to address the way they are setting up the courses. A course can be 8,000 yards long but if the greens are soft, there's going to be low scoring."

Whenever the A.W. Tillinghast Baltusrol course comes up for discussion, the topic of conversation immediately turns to the monster 650 yards 17th. Outrage has been expressed in some quarters about having a golf hole of this vast distance, especially as it plays uphill. Oddly enough, given his outrage at the emphasis on length over subtlety, Paul McGinley has no complaints about having to tackle a genuine three shot par five.

"I played it on Sunday with a driver, five wood and sand wedge", he revealed. "I've no problem with a three shot par five, I can't get home in two but neither can anybody else so that works in my favour. 18 is the only other par five and is well on in two. The fact that you don't meet a par five until the 17th makes the course mentally feel a bit longer than it is. The par fours over 500 yards here, because of modern technology, I'm still hitting a drive and four-iron to them. In their defence, I would say this is an old style golf course that doesn't have particularly modern drainage on it. So the greens remain soft, whereas at Augusta they have that underground system that dries out the greens pretty quickly.

"I've gone on like this before but I'm just banging my head against a stone wall. You need somebody to stand up and say this is not the way it should be but at the moment the four top players in the world are also four of the longest hitters so they're not going to stand up and say this is not the way the game should be. The longer they make the courses, the better it suits the big hitters and on top of that it doesn't penalise the long, wayward hitters.

"Look at Vijay Singh, his attitude is, 'if I do hit it in the rough, I'll be so far up I'll be able to chop it on to the green'. And if I hit it on the fairway, I only have a wedge or a nine iron to the pin. Coming out of the rough and no matter how much of a flyer they get, they're going to stick on wet greens.

"You need someone with enough clout to stand up and say this is madness. Tiger is one of the longest hitters in the world and this course is made for him. The rough is not that bad. I can move it about 150 yards, but Tiger will knock 180 yards out of it. All that said, I don't want to be too negative about it because there is a way I can play this golf course. My short game has got to be sharp and obviously I have to drive it well but it is going to be a particularly tough test for me because the course doesn't sit up for me.

"Whistling Straits last year was great fun, it was fast, it was firm, there was a bit of wind, the greens were rock hard, guys were losing the head. They're not used to it. They can't handle it. You look at St Andrews, they talked about the length of it, but in reality you had two par fives which were really par fours because they played so short. You had two driveable par fours, yet second place was only eight under par. That's sixteen shots over the tournament but nobody seems to get the picture at all.

"I'm only a small voice. Nobody will listen to me, I'm realistic about it. What surprises me is that with all the powers that be in the USGA and the various tours, nobody seems to get a grasp of what scoring is about these days. It's not necessarily technology that's the problem, rather they've taken the skill out of it by setting up the courses like this. Last year, it was a battle of skill, here it's a question of brute strength."

I'll raise my glass to McGinelys thoughts on this !!

Here is another article by Ron Whitten who is a lawyer turned course critic and knows his stuff. He has written for years for Golf Digest.

www.golfdigest.com

The Greens at Baltusrol..


What went wrong that Fourth of July weekend? Flaherty declined to discuss the circumstances, or his subsequent resignation, with Golf World. "I gave my word to the board when I left that I wouldn't publicly discuss the situation with anyone," Flaherty said. "I don't go back on my word, not six years later."

But in 1999, shortly after he submitted his resignation, Flaherty discussed the situation with Golfweek's Bradley Klein. He said he had been trying to see how dry he could keep the greens, as a "dress rehearsal" for the upcoming U.S. Amateur. "I pushed them one day too far," Flaherty said. "They fried. All it takes is one day."

That July, turfgrass consultants were called in. (Apparently, until Flaherty's admission of human error, club officials and experts weren't exactly sure what had caused the greens to die.) Flaherty then resigned, Baltusrol officials retained a headhunter and quickly conducted interviews for his replacement. They soon hired Kuhns, at the time a 44-year-old superintendent with nine years of experience at Oakmont CC and before that, 12 years at Laurel Valley GC. Both of those Pennsylvania clubs have predominantly Poa annua greens, so Kuhns was well-versed in keeping that turf alive and healthy.

"When I arrived for an interview, the place was a ghost town," recalls Kuhns. "Not only were there no golfers on either golf course, there were no cars in the parking lot, no members in the clubhouse. It was unreal."

Kuhns started on Sept. 27, 1999, confident he would have the greens ready for the U.S. Amateur the following August. He proposed seeding the new greens with A-4 bent grass, a tight, upright turf that would grow aggressively when mowed low and thus could compete successfully against future Poa annua infestation. Kuhns also proposed sod, the closest source of which came from a farm near Pittsburgh that had originally been established using plugs from Oakmont, plugs that were heavily Poa. So Baltusrol ended up with a lot of Poa annua in its newly renovated greens, literally the same Poa that Kuhns had dealt with at Oakmont.

To fight it, Kuhns conducted an intense aerification program--"punching" the greens with hollow tines, removing the plugs, then filling the holes with sand and A-4 bent seed. He aerified the greens 15 times between September 1999 and August 2000. (Normally, clubs aerify greens twice a year, in the fall and spring.) By the time of the U.S. Amateur, Baltusrol had fully established Poa/bent-grass greens. (Both the Lower and Upper were used during qualifying rounds, with match play contested on the Upper. That was not because of any weakness in the Lower's greens; the USGA always had intended the matches to be on the Upper.)

Kuhns admits no one can fully eradicate Poa from bent-grass greens except, perhaps, by digging out every plant and root by hand as it appears. Clubs normally combat it by encouraging aggressive growth of bent grass. (There are no commercial chemicals that will kill Poa without damaging bent. Growth retardants often are sprayed on greens in early spring to slow Poa-annua growth while bent grass is still dormant from the previous winter, but that is a stopgap measure.)

"When I arrived for an interview, the place was a ghost town ... no golfers ... no members in the clubhouse. It was unreal."
-- Mark Kuhns
In the past five years Kuhns has succeeded in having the bent grass in Baltusrol's greens push out the Poa. Today Baltusrol's greens are, on average, 70 percent A-4 bent, 30 percent Poa. They will make terrific putting surfaces for the PGA Championship, capable of being mowed tightly to produce a green speed of 12 on a Stimpmeter. Kuhns will water them sparingly as needed during the championship.

The trick, Kuhns says, is to live right on the edge. Not just during a championship, but at all times. "Keep the greens wet enough to stay alive, but also dry enough to stay alive," he says. Kuhns and one of his chief assistants, Scott Bosetti (who now holds the title of Superintendent of the Lower Course) offer two bits of advice to golfers who regularly play at courses with Poa in the greens.

First, learn to live with interruptions of play, five-minute delays while greens are "syringed" (lightly watered). A club should never soak greens Friday night to get them through till Monday, Kuhns says, although many clubs do so to protect weekend play. Overwatering encourages fungus. Likewise, in humid weather, Kuhns suggests not watering at night. The humidity will not allow the greens to breathe and give off water at night. Second, don't postpone fall aerification until after the club's Labor Day tournament. Aerify the greens in August, even though that is a prime month for golf. "Poa-annua seed germinates in the fall and grows in the soil over the winter," Bosetti explains. "Late fall aerifying will bring Poa seed to the surface. Since the cool September climate is perfect for Poa propagation, and the bent is usually going dormant, it's no contest. You'll be cultivating Poa annua, and that's what you'll have the following spring. It's the heat of August that allows bent grass to grow and dominate any Poa seedlings. So you've got to aerify and reseed in August, to give that bent grass the best chance to compete against Poa."

Kuhns admits an early schedule is a tough sell. It may seem easier to implement at a club like Baltusrol, which has more than one course, but Kuhns normally closes both the Lower and Upper at the same time each August to aerify all 36 greens as rapidly as possible.

This August is different, of course. But while the PGA Championship is being contested on Baltusrol Lower, workers will be busy aerifying the greens on the Upper. Within days after the championship concludes, they will then be punching holes in the greens of the Lower Course and reseeding them with more bent.

That's what it takes to keep Baltusrol's greens from dying again.

It's what we should all be doing to keep our own greens alive and healthy.