Reehoorn: U.S. Open Blog, Day 1
June 12, 2007
Jon Reehoorn, assistant coach for the Husky men's golf team, is caddying for Alex Prugh at the 2007 U.S. Open at the Oakmont Country Club in Oakmont, Pa. Reehorn will be writing daily reports and providing photos from the experience back east, exclusively for GoHuskies.com. Here is Reehoorn's first entry from Monday.
U.S. Open Blog - Day 1
When Alex first called and asked me if I would caddy for him this week I immediately called a friend of mine who used to caddy on the PGA Tour for some advice. His first answer was "act like you have been there before." I thought ok, I can handle that but after the first few holes this afternoon things were going so fast I didn't really know what was going on. It is hard to "act like you have been there before" when you are playing with Brett Wetterich, Hunter Mahan, and Sean O'Hair. Robert Allenby and Stewart Cink also were on the same greens as Alex and I at one point during the day.
As the day went on things seemed to slow down a little. I am just trying to enjoy this experience with Alex as much as possible. To be asked by one of my players to caddy for him in the United States Open is quite an honor and hopefully I can help you understand just how great of an experience we are having this week through this blog.
Alex and I just returned to the hotel after completing our first practice round. After playing the front nine with the players I mentioned before we played the back nine by ourselves. We were the second to last group on the course. Ernie Els was the only player behind us. He was also playing as a single. I was hoping the group in front of us would play slow enough that Ernie would want to join us, but no such luck. I should have known luck was not on our side considering what has happened to Alex and I since we arrived in Pittsburgh.
After arriving in Pittsburgh last night (Sunday) at 10:30 P.M., Alex and I were lucky enough to have our bags lost by the airlines. We flew through Philadelphia out of Seattle and from what the locals tell us, Philadelphia is notorious for lost baggage. So if you can, make sure to avoid connections in Philadelphia at all cost! With some help from the hotel concierge, we finally tracked down our baggage, but were told that they only had two of our three bags. They had Alex's clubs, my luggage, and no idea when Alex's luggage would arrive. With a portion of our luggage in hand we headed to the course in hopes that we could find Alex some clothes.
After some help from a USGA official Alex had golf some golf clothes and we headed to the range to prepare for our 2:30 tee time. After a perfect tee shot off the first, Alex had only 170 yards to the hole on the opening 487-yard par 4. A 310 yard drive into a slight breeze. He hit it just as good all the way around today. It was very impressive to watch. On the downhill 667-yard par 5 12th he hit his tee ball about 360 yards into a slight breeze!
As one of the last groups on the course we had to play through the maintenance crew watering, mowing, and rolling the greens, but at the same time this was probably the most interesting part of my day. On the 11th hole I asked what height the mowers were set at this week. The person supervising the mowing on the green said, "I've been instructed that we are not able to talk about that this week." On the 14th hole I got a pretty good idea that whatever they are being mowed is very low.
USGA officials were using a stimpmeter to determine the speed of the greens. A typical public green is probably a 9 on the stimpmeter and at club like Broadmoor in Seattle you might see a 12, but what I saw was an unbelievable 15! For those of you who know what a stimpmeter is, you are probably thinking to yourself, that isn't possible. But I promise, Alex and I watched it as they did it and even stepped it off ourselves.
When you add greens running at a 15 to rough that is so thick that you can't even see your ball when you are over the top of it, scores are not going to be very low this week. As we finished playing with Sean O'Hair and Hunter Mahan after the 9th hole today, O'Hair asked Mahan, "will you take four consecutive rounds of 72 and sit in the clubhouse and see what happens?" Mahan responded by saying, "Yes." Par for Oakmont CC is 70. That means they think the winner this week could be around 8 over par!
We will play our second practice round tomorrow morning at 7:30 A.M. We won't know who we are paired with until we arrive but it should be more fun, especially now that we don't have to worry about our baggage.
