ShareThisAs the No. 4 player in the world, Suzann Pettersen of Norway doesn't always panic the first time she plays a golf course. But, she admitted that's what she did the first time she played a practice round a month ago at Oakmont Country Club.
And that was back when the course, softened by rain and cool weather, was lying down like a sleepy puppy.
Not so on Monday when all of the top women's players in a field of 156 played their first official practice round at Oakmont in preparation for the 65th U.S. Women's Open. They found a beast that was pure Oakmont -- firm, fast and treacherously diabolical.
And the tournament isn't starting for a couple of more days.
"It's playing firmer than it did when I was here two weeks ago," Pettersen said after playing a practice round with top-ranked Cristie Kerr and Michelle Wie. "This is more what the USGA wants this course to be. It's in phenomenal shape for a Monday. There are going to be some exciting holes out here. You got to figure out the greens and the speed and try to be on the right side. They say they're trying to speed them up some more."
That could be the scary part.
Oakmont's greens were rolling at 14 on the Stimpmeter for the first practice round, a speed that Mike Davis, the United States Golf Association's senior director of rules and competition, said is slightly slower than the Stimpmeter reading (15) for the 2007 U.S. Open.
But he also said it was on the "low end of the speed spectrum" for where he would like the greens to roll Thursday when the tournament begins.
"I thought if they were half a foot faster, it would give it more of that Oakmont rollout where ball would get there and just keep going," Davis said. "That's Oakmont. It's when you get these greens really fast, it brings these contours to life.
"I think Oakmont is one of the most strategic golf courses I've ever seen because you have to think about what happens when your ball lands and you have to think about where you want to leave your ball. If you leave it on the wrong side of the green, it's automatic bogey."
None of that seemed to bother Kerr, who comes to Oakmont off a record 12-shot victory in the LPGA Championship -- her second career major title and her second victory in the past three starts.
Kerr played a couple of practice rounds at Oakmont in late May and hadn't returned until Monday. And it wasn't just the 94-degree heat that was brutal, either.
"I love it," Kerr said. "It's tough but it's fair. You really have to be present on every shot you have here. By the end of the practice round today, it was like, whew, my mind feels a little fried."
John Zimmers, Oakmont's course superintendent, is making sure the same thing doesn't happen to Oakmont's famous greens in the withering heat. After weeks of heavy rains and thunderstorms, the eight-day stretch of dry weather has been a panacea for the course and a welcome sight to his grounds staff, which numbers 125 this week.
But, with at least two more days of stifling heat, he has to make sure the greens don't start to go the other way on him.
"At the end of this thing, we want to have a golf course for Oakmont and its members," Zimmers said.
Oakmont doesn't get much better than it was Monday.
"If we could be playing (the tournament), we'd want to be playing today," Zimmers said.
Pettersen, though, was concerned that if Oakmont is playing this firm and fast for the first practice day, what will the conditions be like on Thursday? Or the weekend?
"We were talking when we came down 18, by Thursday and Friday, the fairways will be running even more." Pettersen said. "For a Monday, they were pretty good."
But Davis cautioned that, just because Oakmont is firm and fast now doesn't mean it will progressively get faster as the week goes on.
"We want to present them a golf course on practice days that they're going to have on championship days," Davis said. "This idea of getting greens faster every day, getting them firmer every day, letting the rough get higher every day, that by the time they played on Saturday and Sunday that it's completely different golf course, we've really tried to get away from that."
In other words, no need to panic.
(Gerry Dulac: gdulacat)post-gazette.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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