When the going gets tough, the rough gets cut.<\/p>\n
That was the message sent when the USGA responded to complaints from players by having mowers trim the second cut of rough at Oakmont Country Club to 4 inches in advance of the U.S. Open, which begins Thursday.<\/p>\n
And so Oakmont\u2019s trademark rough, thick as a thicket, has been snipped \u2014 it had grown as high as 6 inches in some areas. The USGA asked that the rough get cut toward the green, making it easier for balls to lay with the high grass, rather than against it, giving players a cleaner shot.<\/p>\n
On Monday, golfer Justin Thomas<\/strong> posted a video on Instagram in which he dropped a ball straight down into the rough, only to watch it disappear in the grass.<\/p>\n \u201cYeah,\u201d\u00a0he wrote, \u201cI’d say Oakmont is ready.\u201d<\/p>\n Dash\u2019s day in the spotlight<\/strong><\/p>\n Jason Day<\/strong>\u2019s 3-year-old son, Dash<\/strong>, gained a lot of attention last year for his enthusiastic celebration of his father\u2019s PGA Championship win.<\/p>\n Now, Dash Day is an even bigger star, featured in an social media advertising campaign for the PGA Tour Superstore. His mother, Day\u2019s wife Ellie<\/strong>, had to help him with the lines.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s going to have those memories to look back on,\u201d Jason Day said. \u201cWe\u2019re going to have that commercial forever and know that, like, when he\u2019s my age, he\u2019ll be able to see, you know, when he was little, he ran out on the greens when I won tournaments. It\u2019s pretty neat.\u201d<\/p>\n The world\u2019s No. 1 golfer, a self-described \u201cboring\u201d guy who said he prefers to live a low-key life out of the spotlight, said he is making more of an effort to soak in all the perks that come with his stardom so that his children -\u2014 Dash and Lucy \u2014 can take enjoy it, too. Day threw out the first pitch at Saturday\u2019s Pirates game, the kind of exposure he would have previously avoided.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat better opportunity than now do I have to get to do this stuff and really look back on it and say I did some pretty cool stuff when I was playing golf?\u201d Day said. \u201cAnd Dash can have that exact same thought when he\u2019s growing up, saying that he did some pretty cool stuff. He got to travel the world. He got to be on TV and do some pretty fun things.\u201d<\/p>\n Golfers embrace technology<\/strong><\/p>\n A Dell laptop computer sat in the shade of Gregor Main<\/strong>\u2019s Titleist golf bag to hide it from the sun\u2019s rays\u00a0at Oakmont.<\/p>\n Main, a former UCLA golfer, worked through his bag during a Tuesday morning practice session. Each swing of each club was converted into numbers on the laptop\u2019s screen moments after impact using TrackMan technology.<\/p>\n TrackMan brands itself as \u201cthe best and most accurate launch monitor and golf radar.\u201d The TrackMan radar, a tablet-sized screen placed a few feet behind the ball, tracks ball flight data and club data, which can be analyzed by a golfer\u2019s swing coach to help identify any adjustments the golfer needs to make in his swing.<\/p>\n Main admittedly doesn\u2019t look into all of the numbers. That\u2019s the job of his swing coach, Justin Lee<\/strong>, who has to absorb the 27 parameters measured by TrackMan and turn that data into feedback on the driving range.<\/p>\n \u201cMy job is to dumb it down and make it as simple as possible,\u201d Lee said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt helps him coach me better because sometimes you don\u2019t know where the [club] face is compared to the [club] path,\u201d Main said. \u201cSo it\u2019s just so easy to tell what I\u2019m doing instead of just the 2-D video. The numbers are just so accurate. It\u2019s just really easy to figure out what\u2019s going on [with my swing].\u201d<\/p>\n