The Fitness Caddie Blog: “The Lip”

Who’s idea was it to make conditions for the US Open some of the most difficult in the world?  Placing pins right behind bunkers and water hazards, on the crests of hills, even rolling out the fringe in some places so that when you miss the green by one foot and have hope of the ball staying up, it ever so slowly rolls into the trouble.  Or making the rough truly live up to it’s name by having two more shorter cuts available before you hit the long grass.  Let me share with you what Sahalee has in store for the US Senior Open coming up in just a few short months, and trust me, this tournament will not disappoint!

I grew up at Sahalee, and was lucky enough to witness this course being prepared for both a PGA Championship in 1998, and the NEC in 2002.  I had just turned 16 the summer they started growing the grass out for the PGA, and lost at least 2 dozen golf balls within the six weeks before that tournament.  Drives that would miss a fairway by even just a foot, became impossible to find.  The course finally started requiring members to take automatic relief from it so the grass would not be destroyed.  The NEC wasn’t nearly as bad, they kept the rough to only 4 inches for that tournament, and it definitely reflected in some better scoring from the players.  But this past Sunday, I stepped foot onto a monster that in 20 years of playing amongst the trees of Sahalee, I had never encountered before.  My picture cannot do justice to the agony that awaits Fred Couples and Greg Norman out there.  They have found pin placements that are even more difficult than 1998, and somehow have fine tuned making the rough look like a jungle.  In some places, you were lucky if people could see your lower body! (ok, maybe that’s an exaggeration, but it sure felt like it!)  The moral of this story, go buy tickets for the US Senior Open at Sahalee Country Club coming up at the end of July, it is going to be awesome!…….and don’t forget to do some pelvic tilts when playing in conditions like this, it’s the best way to teach your body how to generate enough power to actually get the ball out of the rough!