The Los Angeles Country Club has spent nearly a decade preparing its lush surfaces for the 2023 U.S. Open. It's been quite the undertaking, complete with constant maintenance and surveillance of the course's vegetation.
Still, you can't put a grip on Mother Nature. And despite tournament organizers' best efforts, that gleaming green oasis could offer a few surprises to the world's best golfers.
Every part of the course's golden meadows was crafted deliberately. That includes the rough, which features harrowing Bermuda grass.
It's an apparatus that hasn't been particularly prevalent on the PGA Tour circuit in years past. But with hulking stalks and fringes jaundiced by its environment's arid conditions, Bermuda grass is among the more intimidating crops to wade through. Yet that can make for an alluring proposition for tournament organizers. The U.S. Open should always be a challenge. Beanstalk-like carpet can make that happen.
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Strands of green fury are certain to draw the ire of many a star. Here's what you need to know ahead of the 2023 U.S. Open's foray into the City of Angels.
U.S. Open rough at L.A. Country Club
The veld is coarse at Los Angeles Country Club, every fiber coming together to form a haunting expanse of great green carnage. Bermuda grass is woolly. It gets under your skin, upstart as can be. It's got a shape and tenor eerily reminiscent to that of bamboo stalks. It's almost as difficult to get rid of, too.
In this context, Bermuda grass can seem an unusual choice to line the green's fairway. It's not all that common, having last been used in U.S. Open play in 2005. But it was that rarity, that unpredictability, that made the turf all the more enticing to course planners. Course renovations were led by Gil Hanse, who hoped to make the course idyllic, yet frustrating. $60 million was shelled out, all with one simple aim: make Los Angeles Country Club a major-worthy domain.
It was a directive that flowed to the greenery. Regular rough was not going to do. The top-shelf, imported stuff was preferred. And given Bermuda grass' appreciation of scorching environments — it grows best when swarmed in a plume of dry heat — it seemed perfect for balmy L.A.
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Things haven't gone exactly to plan in that regard. Los Angeles has been swallowed in a haze of clouds over the past few months. That hasn't done the Bermuda grass any favors. Tournament officials hoped the follicles of verdant goodness would reach 3 1/4 inches in height. To date, that's still something of a pipe dream.
Regardless, though, the unruly rough should make for a worthy adversary for participants.
Can't start a major championship week without tossing a ball into the rough. #USOpenpic.twitter.com/ca6djr4UaD
— Golf on CBS ⛳ (@GolfonCBS) June 12, 2023
“Even if the rough is not that bad, you’re not gonna be able to put enough spin on it," Collin Morikawa said, per Golf Digest. "So, it’s kind of got that dry thinness to it where you might get some jumpers. You might not be hacking it out, but you might see some balls tumble 20 yards, 10 yards over the green, which, in turn, isn’t good either.”
