Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy play Ballybunion before The Open

KAWAGOE, Japan – There’s often an attempt to place Hideki Matsuyama’s achievements in a larger context, to discuss not just his play but also what it means for his home country of Japan. It’s an easy story, especially for English-speaking media, about a man who uses few words in any language. Matsuyama is not a man on a mission, however. Becoming an evangelist whose pulpit is the putting green has never been his goal. He did not leave his homeland nearly a decade ago in order to grow the game in Japan, nor does he keep long hours on the driving range for that purpose. Matsuyama crossed the Pacific Ocean at age 21 to play the PGA TOUR because he wanted to compete at the highest level. The impact position of his famously methodical swing is more important to him than his impact on golf’s popularity in his homeland. RELATED: Leaderboard, tee times | How the format works | How to watch The Olympics are different than any other golf tournament, however. The majors may be of greater importance to most golfers, but at least there are four of them a year. Miss at the Masters and there’s another opportunity a month later. The Olympics only happen once every four years, however. Matsuyama recognizes that this week is unique, describing a home Olympics as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. “If I say there’s no pressure, I’ll be lying,” he said. There are no spectators at Kasumigaseki Country Club this week, but he was still followed by about 100 people after teeing off Thursday. It was by far the biggest gallery. Many were volunteers clad in matching blue shirts and gray pants. And Matsuyama was reunited with the throng of Japanese media that documents his every move and enquires about every hole. They’ve been absent from the United States since the COVID-19 pandemic began, and this is Matsuyama’s first competition in Japan in some 18 months. Shigeki Maruyama, the four-time TOUR winner who’s serving as Japan’s Olympic coach, said Matsuyama usually “plays much more comfortably” than he did Thursday. His recent COVID-19 diagnosis only complicated things, interrupting Matsuyama’s preparations for this week. “He really likes this course and has special memories, but not being 100% because of what happened in summer, I feel bad for Hideki,” Maruyama said. Matsuyama won the 2009 Japan Junior at Kasumigaseki, then returned a year later to claim the Asia-Pacific Amateur Championship, a win that netted him his first Masters invitation. His win this year at Augusta National, which made him the first Japanese man to win a major, only heightened the expectations for this week. Green and gold perfectly complement each other. Matsuyama hasn’t finished better than T23 in four starts since the Masters, though. He named that as another source of anxiety. “Since my Masters win, I haven’t had the best results so far this summer, so I’m a little bit nervous,” he said in his pre-tournament press conference. His 69 in a low-scoring opening to the Olympics left him six shots behind Austria’s Sepp Straka. Matsuyama, who’s tied for 20th, is four back of bronze. After making birdie on half of his first eight holes, Matsuyama was 2 over par the rest of the way. Maruyama said Matsuyama’s endurance is “night and day” since he contracted COVID-19. Matsuyama had to withdraw from the Rocket Mortgage Classic four weeks ago because of his positive test and also withdrew from The Open Championship. This was his first competitive round since the opening day of the Rocket Mortgage Classic four weeks ago. When asked the most difficult part of competing after such a long layoff, Matsuyama said that his focus faded towards the end of his round. Thursday’s high temperatures only made that task harder. The Games have been played under the shadow of COVID-19, but on the field these Olympics have been a success for the host country. As of Thursday evening, Japan’s 13 gold medals were tied with the United States for the second-most (one behind China). But Japan also has seen one of its star athletes struggle with the pressure of competing at home. Naomi Osaka, who lit the Olympic flame in the opening ceremonies, lost in the third round of the women’s tennis tournament. “I definitely feel like there was a lot of pressure for this,” she said. Like Matsuyama, Osaka was competing after a lengthy hiatus. The Olympics were her first competition since she withdrew from the French Open in June to cope with her mental health. Unlike tennis, Matsuyama has the opportunity to recover from a tough day. Three rounds remain as he tries to win another medal for Japan.

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The host venue for this week’s The American Express is one of the most unique on the PGA TOUR. PGA West’s Stadium Course was built by a World Golf Hall of Famer who added a California ethos to his groundbreaking style when he built this course out of the desert. Like its predecessor, the second Stadium Course also had a controversial debut. It was so hard when it was played 35 years ago that TOUR players petitioned to have it removed from the schedule. PGA West’s Stadium Course may not be as intimidating as it once was, but Dye’s trademark tricks still promote drama, especially on the course’s closing holes. “We’re just giving (the pros) the opportunities to hit great golf shots,” Dye once said. He viewed his penal designs as a canvas for the world’s best players to truly display their skills. The Stadium is one of three courses in use this week but the only one that will be played multiple times, including in Sunday’s final round. Here are 5 Things to Know about the Stadium Course at PGA West. 1. ‘THE HARDEST DAMN COURSE’ Dye was given simple instructions when tasked with building the Stadium Course at PGA West. “Build the hardest damn golf course in the world,” developers Ernie Vossler and Joe Walser told him. Dye had already shaped TPC Sawgrass’ Stadium Course out of a Florida swamp, earning him a reputation as an iconoclastic architect who built demanding layouts that required pinpoint precision. TPC Sawgrass debuted as the venue for THE PLAYERS in 1982, and its difficulty drove players mad. A short time later, Vossler and Walser asked Dye to enact a similar transformation on the opposite coast, creating another stadium design in the desert of California’s Coachella Valley. Dye accomplished his mission. PGA West’s Stadium Course was deemed the hardest in the nation when it opened. Its course rating of 77.1 was the highest ever given by the United States Golf Association. This reputation earned the Stadium Course the 1991 Ryder Cup, though that competition was later moved to another Dye design, Kiawah Island in South Carolina, because of concerns about hosting an intercontinental competition in the Pacific Time Zone. 2. TRANSFORMATION IN THE DESERT The Stadium Course is famous for its dramatic features, including steep slopes and penal hazards. The course belies the property’s original state as a flat parcel of desert. Dye wrote in his autobiography that the “featureless, barren acreage” was the “worst piece of land we ever started with.” The sandy soil allowed Dye to mold a memorable course from the ground. Working in the desert was like playing in a giant sandbox. Dye sculpted a course where water comes into play on nearly half the holes, and there’s more square footage of sand than putting surface. “Length alone would not be the ultimate test for the new course, but I believed strategic hazards, deep bunkers, difficult angles across fairways, slightly offset greens, parallel lakes and desert plants, when combined with cross-current winds, could provide the type of course Joe and Ernie expected,” Dye wrote in his autobiography. 3. THE REVOLT The Stadium Course’s debut as a TOUR venue in 1987 proved that Dye had done his job. Raymond Floyd called the course “spiteful” and “hateful.” Tom Watson said he was “sick and tired” of Dye’s radical designs. “It requires you to execute shots that no sane golfer should be expected to play,” Watson added. Famed Los Angeles Times columnist Jim Murray wrote that “you need a camel, a canoe, a priest and a tourniquet to get through it.” California native Al Geiberger once said playing PGA West was like working through the stages of grief. Expecting positive reviews from the TOUR pros, Dye instead was “lambasted with personal, cutting remarks to the effect that I had lost my mule-headed mind,” he wrote. It didn’t help that the first round was hit by cold weather that only made conditions more difficult. Things didn’t get much easier by Sunday. The 73.97 final-round scoring average was almost unheard of for the friendly setups of this pro-am tournament, where red numbers are the norm. It was only a matter of weeks before TOUR professionals petitioned to have the Stadium Course removed from the rotation of courses for the event that was then known as the Bob Hope Classic. Dye called the petition “absurd.” “The professionals forget that the whole idea of a Pete Dye golf course is to require players to hit a wide variety of shots,” Dye said. “I’ve always felt that a good player who’s playing well wants to play a difficult golf course because he knows the winner won’t be someone who can just out-putt him.” Lee Trevino, known as one of the best ball-strikers in the game’s history, also defended the course during the telecast of the 1987 Hope. “There’s been a lot of controversy about PGA West this week. Some pros say it stinks, it’s a monster, it’s unfair,” he said. “Well, I want to ask you, what makes a golf course unfair? Is it unfair because you have to hit the tee ball down the middle of the fairway and good iron shots into the green? Or is it fair because you can hit the ball all over the parking lot and make birdies? You be the judge of that, but if you ask me, if for the last 20 years we would’ve played golf courses like this one, maybe some of (you) that won a lot of golf tournaments wouldn’t have won as many.” It was nearly three decades before the Stadium Course returned to the TOUR schedule. While it continued to host tournaments like the Skins Game and Final Stage of Q-School, the course didn’t reappear on TOUR until the 2016 American Express. Advances in everything from agronomy to architecture, fitness to technology, have better equipped players to face challenges like those presented by the Stadium Course, which have become more commonplace. While still a challenge, the course is no longer considered controversial. “It says that the combination of technology and players has moved substantially over the course of 30 years,” said the famed architect Tom Doak, who started his career by working for Dye. “It also says that many architects have reacted to that and built very difficult courses, in reaction to what they saw on TV.” 4. FAULT LINES Like the first Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass, Dye built a memorable finishing stretch for the second edition. He called PGA West’s final three holes “maybe the most difficult finishing holes I’ve ever built.” “It’s hang-on-to-your-hat time when you turn back toward the clubhouse,” he said. Like TPC Sawgrass, PGA West finishes with a risk-reward par-5, island-green par-3 and water-lined par-4. The par-5 16th, named San Andreas (after the large fault that runs through the state), features a deep greenside bunker that Dye said may be “the deepest greenside bunker this side of Mars.” He intended to build an unforgettable bunker, but it developed a bit by accident. Dye told the bulldozer operator to keep digging until he hit water. “I don’t know if he thought I was kidding or not,” Dye wrote, “but his bulldozer finally found water at 22 feet, and we leveled it off at 20.” Vossler was skeptical about the deep sand trap. Before it was filled in with sand, he dumped a pile of sand at the bottom of the deep ditch and said Dye could keep the bunker only if he could hit a shot onto the green from down there. “Tossing me a sand wedge, Ernie challenged me: ‘If you can get it on the green from there, then the damn bunker’s all right with me,’” Dye wrote. “I used my flip-wrist sand wedge swing and safely elevated the ball up to the green site. … Just think of all the fun golfers would have missed if I’d left the ball in the … sand.” The bunker became famous when Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill couldn’t escape it during the 1987 Hope, finally opting to throw his ball out after several unsuccessful attempts to extricate it with a sand wedge. “There were those who thought the depth of the bunker was ridiculous and unfair,” Dye wrote. “Writers of note believed I had gone off the deep end.” 5. ISLAND TIME Dye believed a strong 17th hole is an important feature for any golf course. “Even though 18 is the finishing hole, I have focused more on the 17th because I always feel that it sets up the closing drama for 18,” he wrote. He created the world’s most famous 17th hole at TPC Sawgrass, but he wasn’t excited when asked by the developers and PGA TOUR Commissioner Deane Beman to replicate it in California. They believed an island green was a necessity if PGA West was going to earn its desired reputation for difficulty. “I was afraid that if I built another island green,” Dye wrote, “both holes would end up losing their uniqueness.” He acquiesced but made sure to add unique elements to the hole that would be named Alcatraz after the island prison in San Francisco. PGA West’s 17th would play from an elevated tee, unlike the flat version in Florida. Rocks, instead of railroad ties, lined Dye’s second island green, to help it fit in with the mountains that surround the course. PGA West’s island is larger than the original, as well, to accommodate a longer tee shot. PGA West’s 17th has a scorecard yardage of 165 yards, compared to 137 yards at TPC Sawgrass.

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