Tour Guide: Two National Opens

We have dueling national championships this week, as the U.S. Women’s Open and RBC Canadian Open take center stage in the world of golf.

We’ve had plenty of U.S. Open content so far, including a lot on Lancaster, which also hosted in 2015, an event that inspired Meg Adkins to take a trip down memory lane below. But up first, Joseph LaMagna explains what he likes about Hamilton Golf and Country Club, even if weather means we might not get to see it this week.

Restoring Hamilton

By Joseph LaMagna

The following few days may yield a sneaky awesome stretch of golf.

The U.S. Women’s Open at Lancaster Country Club promises to be an exciting display of championship golf, especially if Nelly Korda makes her way into contention. On the PGA Tour, the RBC Canadian Open is being played at Hamilton Golf & Country Club, a golf course that may scratch the itch of architecture enthusiasts.

Hamilton is a Harry Colt design that officially opened in 1916. Including this week’s tournament, Hamilton has hosted seven Canadian Opens, most recently the 2019 edition, which Rory McIlroy won by seven shots. Since 2019, the course has undergone a fairly significant $8.5 million restoration at the hands of Martin Ebert. Green complexes have been reconstructed, bunkers have been both added and removed, holes have been lengthened, trees have been cleared, and some mowing lines have been restored.

Through the lens of testing PGA Tour players, I’d say the most relevant changes include lengthening a handful of holes, pinching in fairways via new bunkers at around the 300-yard mark on some of the holes, and that some of the greenside bunkers have been removed and replaced with tightly mown run-off areas, which were already a prominent feature of this golf course.

The 14th hole is a good representation of the spirit of the changes made to the golf course since 2019. The hole has been lengthened 24 yards, and a sizable fairway bunker has been added down the left side of the hole. I’m curious about the rationale behind adding this particular fairway bunker, as it only serves to make the hole more punitive, especially for members, without impacting off-the-tee strategy for pros or top amateurs. Perhaps Colt intended for a bunker to line the left side of the hole; it just seems superfluous and out of place to my eye, at least in how it is implemented today.

The 14th hole post-restoration, courtesy of Hamilton Golf and Country Club website

Around the green, the two left bunkers have been merged into one larger bunker, while the right greenside bunker has been removed entirely and replaced with a tight run-off area.

The 14th hole in 2019 pre-restoration, courtesy of ShotLink

The 14th hole post-restoration, courtesy of Hamilton Golf and Country Club website

In my opinion, the two best attributes of Hamilton Golf and Country Club are the land movement, which features considerable elevation change, and the aforementioned tight run-off areas around greens, which place an emphasis on precise iron play.

Professional golf is at its best when players must control the golf ball once it hits the ground. Thus, I tend to be a proponent of the combination of long irons and tight run-off areas, especially when thoughtful contouring and design results in severe penalties associated with missing in the wrong locations around the green.

To successfully bring all of these factors together, though, a golf course must play long, firm, and fast. Without length it’s too easy to remove the ground from the equation with a high spinning wedge on short approach shots, while misses around the green become much less scary for pros when soft and slow conditions reduce the penalty associated with short-sided leaves.

Hamilton measures just over 7,000 yards and has taken on a ton of rain this week. That means a short golf course will play soft as well, muting many of the best features of the design. I expect it to be a pretty easy test this week, given the soft, benign conditions.

Nonetheless, I’m eager to watch some of the best golfers in the world tackle a Harry Colt layout on a beautiful piece of property. I’d love to see professional golf return to Hamilton in more favorable conditions. And I’m envious of those who get to play regularly at Hamilton, a cleverly designed golf course with tricky green complexes surrounded by tight run-off areas.

(I recommend taking a spin through the hole-by-hole tour on the Hamilton website. Just remember the Canadian Open is played on the West Course and South Course.)

Memory Lane: the 2015 U.S. Women’s Open

By Meg Adkins

Returning to Lancaster just nine years after it first hosted the U.S. Women’s Open was a rare move for the USGA. The next repeat site to host will be Oakmont in 2028, 18 years after Paula Creamer won her lone major there. The quick return makes more sense when you take into account how the event was embraced by Lancaster the first time around, as well as how the course produced an exciting leaderboard and deserving winner in In Gee Chun.

Thanks to the USGA’s efforts on YouTube to document their championships, it was easy to take a trip down memory lane and revisit the final round from 2015. Here are a few insights, both serious and not so serious, from that Sunday.

A Back-and-Forth Back Nine

The video picks up the broadcast with the final group of Amy Yang and Stacy Lewis teeing off the 11th. One group ahead, In Gee Chun is lurking at 4-under and four back. When Yang tapped in her eventual bogey putt on 11 her lead is cut to one, as a smiling Chun birdied both the difficult 11th and the short par-3 12th.

The smiles would continue for Chun as she added birdies at 15, 16, and 17 to take the lead to 9-under. It looked like a runaway win for Chun as Yang continued to struggle, missing an opportunity to get one back at 14. Credit to Yang for battling to the end, posting an eagle on 16 and making a birdie on 17. (Additional credit to the USGA adding to the excitement by moving the tees up on the 16th, which led to a near ace by Michelle Wie.)

As Yang made her way to the 72nd hole, her late burst meant she just needed par to meet Chun in a playoff. The brute of a finisher had just tripped up In Gee, pulling her back into a tie. But it’d be the same story for Yang, as her par putt failed to drop and the title of U.S. Women’s Open Champion was Chun’s. With its mix of gettable and difficult holes on the back nine, Lancaster is set up for drama. It delivered on that in 2015, and fingers crossed Lancaster does so again this week.

Speaking of Michelle Wie, the first time she popped up on my screen I was taken aback at the amount of KT tape she had on her left leg. An ankle brace completed a look that made it glaringly obvious she was not 100%. A nagging hip injury was clearly bothering her throughout the day. Even more jarring was the sight of her putting routine (see the full routine around the 19:15 mark) and tabletop stance. You can really see how much the injuries were affecting her on the near hole-in-one on 16, where she’s barely able to complete her swing. Major props to Michelle fighting through the pain and giving it a run as the defending champ.

Golf on FOX

After stumbling out of the gates with their coverage of the U.S. Open at Chambers Bay, the FOX broadcast was fairly buttoned up just a month later at Lancaster. Juli Inkster may not have been the most well spoken or tidiest of broadcasters (she gives up on saying the KLPGA and JLPGA correctly), but she wasn’t afraid to critique and offer her honest assessment of what was unfolding on the course. Joe Buck navigates the action very well and brings a level of enthusiasm that can sometimes be missing from today’s NBC crew. Check out the 45:15 mark for a check-in with the booth, where you’ll find Greg Norman sitting next to Inkster and Joe Buck. He speaks often about how best to play down the stretch of majors, which you can take for whatever that’s worth.

Crowds, Crowds, Crowds

After watching sparse crowds at nearly every LPGA stop this year, it was refreshing to see packed grandstands and the people stacked up against the ropes at Lancaster. It sounds like the record attendance that was set in 2015 won’t be broken this year, but it could get close, especially if Nelly is in the hunt over the weekend. Lancaster may not be as renowned as Pebble Beach, but it’ll likely bring the roars again this year, a factor which Pebble sometimes lacks due to its layout. I arrived at Lancaster on Wednesday, and the buildout is quite large. Combine that with a routing that has multiple gathering spots and the ingredients are all there for some serious audience participation and excitement.

Tour Guide is a weekly Club TFE feature looking at the world of pro golf, focusing on course details, players to watch, swing analysis, and the occasional light-hearted romp through golf history.