Nelly Korda’s 10-over opening spherical was only the start.
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LANCASTER, Pa. — The groan arrived on the tee field, confirming the unhealthy information. It was Thursday on the twelfth gap on the U.S. Ladies’s Open and it’d simply occurred once more: anyone had landed a tee shot within the water.
The person standing to the appropriate of the tee field won’t have heard the groan. Or perhaps he did, however by the point 4 p.m. native time rolled across the groans had grown so frequent and so common that their existence didn’t register with him. In both case, he broke decorum from typical guy-at-a-golf-tournament habits and whipped out his cellphone to take a name. A buddy was on the opposite line, and our good friend had one thing to inform him.
“Dude,” he mentioned, grinning. “I’m right here on the U.S. Open, and it’s insane.”
After which a pause.
“The U.S. Ladies’s Open.”
On Thursday at Lancaster C.C., gamers battled a golf course whose setup would have examined any skilled subject. Like all the nice U.S. Opens of outdated, the wind was whipping, the bottom was calcified, and the scores went skyrocketing. After Thursday, the variety of bogeys-or-worse had greater than tripled the variety of birdies. And after Thursday, the variety of under-par gamers on supposedly the best of the 4 event days sat at simply three.
We knew this week could be laborious. In Gee Chun received the 2015 U.S. Ladies’s Open at Lancaster C.C. with a rating of 8 beneath, and for many of the week the leaderboard’s high 10 gamers had been the one ones with a rating beneath par. Because the week began, participant after participant stepped to the rostrum to share the identical perspective: the golf course was laborious, it was straightforward to make errors, it was a basic U.S. Open check.
However we didn’t know it will be this laborious. Rose Zhang hitting the inexperienced with an method shot and spinning it 15 yards again into the water-hard. Lexi Thompson needing three chips to land her ball on the tenth green-hard. Nelly Korda placing three within the water and making a ten — a ten!!! — laborious. By the top of the day, the scoring common at Lancaster had crept north of 5 over par, and the gamers had been equal components dejected and demoralized.
“I knew it as quickly as I walked out of the resort,” mentioned Andrea Lee, the low participant from the morning wave. “It was gusting fairly good, even within the morning after I thought it was going to be somewhat bit calmer in comparison with the afternoon.”
Lee arrived on the course to seek out the wind not gusting however outright galing at instances, spewing pollen into the air and all method of golf photographs into unlucky locations.
“I simply knew it was going to be a grind on the market,” Lee mentioned. “I imply, this golf course is such a check. It’s a beast of a golf course, actually, and par’s a extremely good rating out right here.”
The worst offender of the wind was the twelfth gap, a devilish frontward-sloping par-3 with a false entrance careening dangerously towards a creek. The opening was taking part in simply 161 yards right now on the bottom, nevertheless it performed anyplace from 10-20 yards longer into the brunt of the wind. The consequence was an almost unimaginable determination for many of the finest gamers within the subject: hit your longer membership by way of the wind and threat hitting it into the again bunker, the place a short-sided chip risked (as Korda did after choosing 6-iron and hitting it too far) rolling again into the creek; or hit a shorter membership into the wind with the hopes it wouldn’t get gusted straight into the water.
A backup of “25 or half-hour” (Korda’s estimation) existed on the outlet all day due to this determination, which plagued gamers on each side of the ledger. However these watching from exterior the ropes didn’t appear to thoughts the delay — they watched all afternoon lengthy with a perverse pleasure on their faces, every successive gaffe serving as additional proof that this yr’s nationwide championship wouldn’t present some cupcake winner.
It helped some that Korda, the week’s head-and-shoulders favourite, plunked three within the water on No. 12 simply moments after the event began. Her 10 to start out the day set the tone for what was going to comply with.
“I simply didn’t actually wish to shoot 80, and I simply stored making bogeys,” Korda mentioned, minutes after taking pictures 80 to start out the event. “Right this moment was only a unhealthy day.”
Nelly Korda’s disastrous main begin reveals hanging flaw in her recreation
In a subject of 156 gamers, Korda ended Thursday in a tie for one hundred and fortieth, which is able to certainly lead somebody to argue that the U.S. Ladies’s Open shouldn’t be honest. And naturally, should you’re a TV companion or event organizer, it isn’t honest. Korda is a generational expertise and one of many true needle-movers in professional golf, and viewers received’t be tuning in by the droves to see if she — and different far-over-par stars like Rose Zhang (+8) and Lexi Thompson (+7) — can struggle their means again to the cutline.
However in some methods, Korda, Zhang and Thompson’s scores underlined the purpose. If the winner of six of the final seven girls’s occasions can ship a second able to regarding even the best handicapper, then Lancaster isn’t discriminating in its problem. And if Lancaster is an equal-opportunity offender, then the U.S. Ladies’s Open is delivering precisely what we hoped it will.
On Thursday on the U.S. Ladies’s Open, satisfaction didn’t come within the type of a can’t-miss leaderboard or a hair-raising roar. It got here within the type of a groan.
A pleasant, devilish, wonderful groan.
