Welcome to the 2010 LPGA Championship - held in Pittsford, NY at Locust Hills Country Club:
The course is lush and with heavy rain for most of the day on Tuesday, the course will play soft and longer than its yardage. Very large trees line most of the fairways and with the rough as lush as it is, there will be a substantial premium on drives staying in the fairways.
Lets start on Hole #3:
Look how teeing up on the left side of this tee compares to teeing up from the right side.
Hole #3 - View from the left side of the tee
Hole #3 - View from the right side of tee
This tee shot will be quite imposing to anyone with a serious hook trajectory, and they’ll have to give themselves a little better angle off the tee and try to hit a fade to find the fairway. The caddie shown is walking from two green back to three tee. Now look at how the same situation sets up off of the 18th tee.
Here is the view from the left side of the tee:
And here is the view from the right side of the tee:
When the players miss the fairways, they’ll find a constant height rough (not graduated like at the men’s US Open at Pebble Beach) that is thick and strong. It will be very difficult to control the spin of shots from this rough.
The same thick rough surrounds the greens, and will seriously challenge their short game shots.
Especially when trying to pitch delicately to a tight pin position guarded by a tier on the putting green.
Many of the greens at Locust Hills seem to have a tier running through them: some of the tiers are slight, like at Hole #10,
while others have more pronounced tiers like green #2.
Depending on the tournament green speeds (they were running at about 11 feet on Monday and Tuesday before the rain), putting across these slopes and tiers should make for some very interesting results by the weekend. It will be fun to watch the best lady players in the world tackle this course, and I hope the weather cooperates to give them a chance to really challange it.
Good Luck to All!
