A 78-yard par-3 at the U.S. Open? The prospect has players on guard

LOS ANGELES — Sahith Theegala isn’t accustomed to hitting lob wedges off the tee, certainly not at major championships. But there he was on the 15th hole of Los Angeles Country Club’s North Course Wednesday afternoon, thumping a ball skyward with his trusty 60-degree toward a target the size of a small backyard swimming pool.

His swing thoughts?

“Just trying to not knife it,” he said, laughing, as he strolled the 78 yards from tee to pin. “Yeah, literally — just trying to clip it, get a little spin.”

The 15th hole is officially listed as 124 yards for this U.S Open, but all signs point toward the USGA pushing up the tees for one round so the hole will play somewhere closer to 80 yards (aka, what would be the shortest hole in U.S. Open history), just as it did when the North Course played host to the Walker Cup in 2017.

During that event, Doug Ghim, who played on the U.S. side, said of the 15th, “Half the battle was trying to decide whether to use a tee or put it on the ground.”

The other half of the battle is more complicated: where to land your ball.

The 15th green is shaped like a boomerang that narrows as it moves from back to front. When both the tee and flag are back, the hole can play nearly 150 yards. But when the tee and flag are up, the hole plays only half that distance — but to a landing area that is only seven yards deep. Short misses will find a cavernous bunker or strip of gnarly rough. Same goes for long misses. Too far left is no good, either. If players leave their tee shots on the wrong side of a knob that divides the green, they will be left with a treacherous putt up and over the mound and down a slippery slope.

Here’s the point: Yeah, it’s only an 80-yard flip but you had better execute a damn good flip.

“I think the key is not going directly at the pin,” Theegala said. “You want to try and get it past the hole and to the left.”

He paused, sized up the green, then added, “I love this hole. I think it’s brilliant.”

Whether all the players will be so enamored, only time will tell. Birdies will be plentiful, but it’s also not hard to imagine a pro’s tee shot bounding off the green and into the back bunker, leading to a 5 and a scowl.    

Jon Rahm played the shorty in the PAC-12 Championship a decade ago. He said he remembered hitting “a great shot. Landed a foot from the hole and [went] long into the rough.”

He added: “Very rarely are you going to have a hole that short where the best players in the world are going to be thinking about going 20 feet long left to use that slope to at least hit the green, and that’s something beautiful. It’s a hole that gives you a lot to think about.”

That much was clear during Wednesday’s practice round. As players surveyed the expected location of the 80-yard pin, they played shots from all directions: blasts from the front bunker, touchy chips from the rough, snaking putts from above the hole. Sergio Garcia and Ross Fisher spent at least five minutes observing the green’s many subtleties; as they paced around the putting surface together, they gesticulated like explorers pointing out new discoveries.

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Practice partners Xander Schaufelle and Patrick Cantlay hit several putts each from the far side of the knob down to the lower pin, with both players taking decidedly different lines. Cantlay swung his putt out to the right while Schaufelle went left. Incredibly, given the banks on either side of the green, both putts made their way back toward the hole.  

“Fifteen is one of those holes where you can kind of do whatever you want with it,” Scottie Scheffler said earlier in the week. “It’s really kind of a genius design with the way the green is. I love those little short par-3s. I think that’s the way most par-3s should be, just because there is opportunity for birdie and bogey.”

According to NBC Sports’ John Wood, Rickie Fowler said he might even lay up. Crazy talk? Maybe, maybe not. A shaved-down area just off the lower part of the green leaves a relatively simple chip or putt back up the slope.

If the USGA does set up the 15th at its mighty-mite distance, it still won’t be the shortest hole Theegala has played in competition. That honor goes to the 15th hole at Lakeside Golf Club, just 10 miles from LACC, where Theegala played in the 2019 Southern California Golf Association Amateur.  

“Impossible shot,” Theegala said Wednesday. “Downwind, 68 yards, I thought I hit I perfect — one-hopped it over.”

No matter. He still won that week.