At historic Newport Country Club, some maintenance practices are as old as the club itself. Kathryn Riley/USGA If your idea of big-time tournament golf is a competition played on emerald-green terrain, underpinned by SubAir Systems , patrolled by moisture-sensing drones and fine-tuned with the assistance of all kinds of space-age advents, we don’t blame you. There’s plenty of that to go around.
This week, though, something different is afoot as the over-50 set convenes in Rhode Island for the U.S. Senior Open , at Newport Country Club.
A visit to the more century-old club is a trip through time to the birthplace of championship golf in this country; the first U.S. Amateur and the U.
S. Open were both held here in 1895. It’s also a reminder of a more rustic era in golf-course maintenance, when layouts in the U.
S. were kept more like their counterparts in Ireland and the UK. Augusta National this is not.
Consider, for instance, irrigation. While Newport’s greens and tees have sprinkler heads, its playing corridors don’t. Unique among USGA championship venues, the course has no irrigation system for its fairways and rough because, well, that’s how it’s always been, and the membership likes it that way.
What are the implications for this week’s competition? Ben Kimball is senior director of championships for the USGA. We asked him about Newport’s distinctive infrastructure (or lack there of) and its impact on course setup for the event. Tightening fairways for a .
