Player reactions part 3: Woodland, Furyk, Leishman
We’ve got more player reviews of The Straits Course. These interviews are from late Tuesday afternoon.
“The golf course is awesome; it’s in perfect shape. It’s a little soft right now so the fairways are playing pretty wide and the greens are a little slow. I’m sure if we don’t get any rain it’ll firm up and it’ll be the perfect test. Probably just how they want it.
The bunkers are good, they are firmed up right now with the rain we’ve had. They’re pretty consistent throughout so that’s nice. Some of them can get pretty nasty so you want to avoid them.
The fescue is a lot easier than the rough and the bunkers are a lot easier than the rough. You miss a shot just off the fairway or the green and it gives yourself a pretty good challenge.”
“The course is really, really good, but soft. As far as fairways and greens, it’s perfect. The ball is sitting up in the fairway. It’s soft, but I feel like that’ll change over the next couple days. The rough in general is really thick.
Golfdom Associate Editor Grant B. Gannon discusses course conditions with 2015 Open Championship runner-up Marc Leishman.
The bunkers are good, they’re nice and firm. There’s obviously a lot of them, I didn’t go into all of them but the ones I did were nice and firm. I didn’t go into a lot of them, hopefully I do that all week.
I played here in 2010, I’ve played it six times. I love this course, it’s really good. A lot of holes are risk/reward, if you want to bring those bad bunkers into play, you can, and you can give yourself easier shots into the greens… but if you don’t, you can lay back and take the bad ones out of play. But you’ve got longer shots into the greens and not as many birdie opportunities.”
“It’s wet. It’s drained pretty well considering they got so much rain (Monday) night. It is pretty soft; greens are soft, fairways are soft, the ball’s not rolling. But it looks like it’s in pretty decent shape.
The bunkers have drained fine… The rough has spots that are real playable, and spots that are real nasty. It’s not uniform. I think that’s the nature of the golf course, it has that raw look. It’s very pristine from the fairway in, and it’s very raw from fairway out. It goes along with the style.
The current No. 4 player in the world, Jim Furyk had nice things to say about the course, but admitted he’s not a fan of the Straits Course.
(The Straits Course) is not one of my favorites. I think it’s… Pete Dye’s stuff is real awkward to me. The bunkering is very awkward. There are a lot of shots where the ball rolls off the edge of the green, and the way the bunkers are very flat, it runs the ball down into the… there’s no lip, no carve, where the ball will end up in a certain part of the bunker, and the ball will roll right up to the back of the bunker and there’s no way to get the ball on the green. It’s got nothing to do with the maintenance; it’s the design. It’s awkward, in my opinion.”
“It’s good, it’s soft, the greens are slower than what you’d expect, but I think they’ll firm them up. The rough is thick, very thick. You don’t want to get into too many fairway bunkers, and you don’t want to get into the rough.
It’s a good golf course, a good test. The par threes are amazing. I like the par threes that aren’t these typical 240-yard par threes that we see nowadays. Hit a really good shot and you’ve got a good chance at birdie. Overall it’s a really good golf course.”
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