Why this Green Green Open has its own set of unusual rules

Oakmont, Pa. -Jo Practical-Green thing that emits containing the back of the club here in Oakmont country club? it’s NO A green practice – not technically, anyway. , Is, in fact, the 9th back of the 9th, on which UsgaAs he has done in the past of the US, it opens here, is allowing players to practice this week.

“This is a difference that may not seem a lot,” Craig Winter, senior director of USGA, Golf rules and amateur status, told Golf.com on Tuesday morning, “but if she it Was A green return practice there would also say that it is a wrong green, meaning players will have to get relief from it, and then this is not what we are doing. “

Instead, if a player’s approach to the 9th green in this 125 -The open US It should happen to keep it very far and placed in the Green part full of practical holes and a heavy tour, that player would simply play away from wherever his ball is placed. And should his orbit happen to disappear in one of those practical holes? “Land under repair,” Winter said. “You get relief from the hole itself. Just put it to the nearest point of relief (not closer to the hole).”

Wild, right?

The whole scene is. At 11am on Tuesday, as players shot access to the 9th green shots and sized from different angles, more than two dozen people grinded in the back half of Green: players, caddies, coach, agents, reporters. To be clear, the green is large-70 meters from front to back and more than 20,000 square meters-so there is room to roam, but still there is no other environment like high-level competitive golf.

The unusual configuration is written for players in the signage surrounding the green. “All this green is the 9th green,” the signs say. “Hasten divided into two sections to allow the practice of placement before and between rounds using two blue shares and one blue point.”

“If you see a kind of where that line is there is nothing that near it you can ever put on a hole,” Winter said. “There are quite steep slopes in that country. This is a kind of natural rest. It is similar to what we did in 2016, probably within a yard or more of it.”

This demarcation is important, however, because, as competition starts diligently on Thursday, if a player deliberately rolls a practice from the back of the green, over the fictional border and the front of the green, it could be submerged with a two -stroke for breach of rule 5.2, which stops the practice of practice in the course. If a player would hit a second Practice putt in the lower half green, the punishment would be even stronger: disqualification.

Players who accidentally knock a blow on the line, however, do not need to worry. “Maybe it’s a pull or a push; this will be fine,” Winter said. “We just don’t want players with intent to try to play” in the lower half green.

Split Green also means a rule of the rules that the abnormality is in play this week. While players are not allowed to measure surface conditions (with levels, moisture meters, etc.) in the lower half green, they ARE It is allowed to do this in the back half, or on the club side, green. “You are seeing a lot of things you will never see in the golf course that is happening in what is one of our championship greens just because this is the simplest answer in the process,” Winter said.

If decisions were simple is another matter. But, of course, if everything goes to plan, no rules will be required.