Chambers Bay Will Be the Most Unique U.S. Open Championship in Years

For 114 years, the U.S. Open Championship meant tight fairways, wrist-breaking rough and lightning-fast greens. For the 115th edition of this prestigious tournament, things are getting crazy. 

Remember that episode of The Simpsons when Hans Moleman gets hit in the groin with a football and Homer dies laughing, while Moleman is left hopeless on the ground?

Homer Simpson is USGA executive director Mike Davis, whereas Hans Moleman is the field. Davis is salivating at the setup of the golf course, while the players have no idea what to expect. 

Chambers Bay is a special golf course. Nobody can deny that. The link-style setup will be a great warm-up for the British Open, but the most unique aspect of the golf course is the grass.

The everyday golfer may think that grass is grass and it won't affect the best players in the world, but are they ever wrong. 

Mike Davis went into detail about the grass during media day, via Craig Smith of The Seattle Times:

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It’s a great grass to play golf on because it doesn’t have any tackiness to it. It’s a thin blade of grass, round, and when the ball hits it—while a lot of other grasses will kind of grab it—on fescue it skids...And what that means is, when you’re playing golf you’ve got to think about what happens when your ball hits, where it’s going to bounce and roll to. So it’s a fascinating grass on which to play.

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According to an article written by Todd Milles of The News Tribune, Chambers Bay is "94 percent fine fescue and six percent colonial bentgrass." As a result, the golf course doesn't require much water and creates an incredible firm surface from the tee deck all the way to the putting green. 

Taking place in the Pacific Northwest for the first time in U.S. Open history, Chambers Bay adds to the USGA's new motto that "brown is the new beautiful." This effort was on full display at Pinehurst No. 2 last year and continues to be a trend moving forward. 

Via Rex Hoggard of GolfChannel.com, Davis explained the reasoning behind the brown movement:

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What we really are after is a couple of things. One is just less water used on golf courses, firmer conditions...That doesn't mean we're looking for brown golf courses. Some golf courses with some type of grasses, if they get brown they are going to die. The other thing is just trying for less manicured golf courses when you get off the fairway, so the concept of the maintenance down the middle is to literally reduce some of the costs and so on.

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There will be many critics arguing the colour of Chambers Bay without understanding the science behind it. Fescue grass browns in the summer months and continues to remain playable. The greens at Chambers Bay may look like rubbish in spots, but they'll be running perfectly—reminiscent to a ball being rolled on a piece of carpet.

Robert Trent Jones Jr.—who has designed over 230 golf courses, including Chambers Bay—may get a lot of heat throughout the week, but at the end of the day, isn't that what the U.S. Open's all about?

In 2002, Bethpage Black seemed like a farce to host the championship. Now, it's hosted two U.S. Opens, the 2012 Barclays and will host the 2019 PGA Championship and 2024 Ryder Cup. 

For the most part, people are hesitant for change, and that's exactly what this year's U.S. Open is all about.

Chambers Bay is a golf course that best suits a European style but is being played on American soil. It has a fairway that's 115 yards wide, when traditionally fairways are the size of a grocery store aisle. Tee markers will be slightly sloped. The course will be playing almost 8,000 yards and, last but not least, holes No. 1 and 18 will rotate from being a par 4 to a par 5.

Everything about Chambers Bay is backwards for a U.S. Open Championship, and you know what: It's perfect.