2015 U.S. Open: A guide to Chambers Bay Golf Course - SB Nation

The U.S. Open heads to the Pacific Northwest where it will be met by a course that would look more familiar in Scotland than Washington. So what defines this place?

It seems every year the days leading up to the U.S. Open are filled with commentators and writers lauding the course for its historic place in American golf. It's generally not hyperbole either as the site of the U.S. Open tends to ooze with prestige and history. This year, the site of the 2015 U.S. Open was an uninhabited gravel pit less than 10 years ago.

Chambers Bay doesn't have the history of a Merion Golf Club or the prestige of a Pebble Beach. Instead, it's a new entry into the world of major championship golf. A scenic links course sculpted along the coast of Puget Sound that looks like it would be a better fit in Scotland than the Pacific Northwest. Chambers Bay may be a relative unknown to the majority of the golf world, but that is about to change as it steps into the spotlight as the host site of the U.S. Open.

The birth of a Chambers Bay

It's rare for the Pacific Northwest to host even a PGA Tour event, much less a major championship. The PGA Championship was held at Sahalee Country Club in 1998, but you'd be hard pressed to believe the tree-lined Sahalee and the fescue-covered Chambers Bay are in the same time zone, not to mention fewer than 60 miles apart.

Chambers Bay isn't lined with trees like most courses in the Pacific Northwest. Instead, there is only a lone tree on the course. In their absence are rolling hills covered in fescue grass that look straight out of a postcard from Scotland.

In 2007, course designer Robert Trent Jones Jr. and his team took an empty sand quarry and envisioned a world-class links course. Armed with plenty of freedom thanks to a lack of environmental restrictions due to the site's status as a working mine, Jones and his team created just that. Moving nearly 1.5 million cubic yards of sand, they molded a traditional links style course over the 250 acres.

The result is a little piece of European links tucked along the Pacific Ocean. Envisioned from the start as a major championship caliber course, Chambers Bay was awarded the 2015 U.S. Open just eight months after opening. When players tee it up on Thursday, Chambers Bay will become just the third municipal course to host a U.S. Open and one of the youngest courses to ever host America's championship.

Bringing European links to the U.S. Open

Major championship golf being played on a links course is hardly a new phenomenon, but it's typically reserved for the British Open. U.S. Open layouts are usually famous for narrow fairways and rough so thick it's nearly an injury hazard to hit out of, if you can even find your ball. Chambers Bay is not that.

(Photo by Harry How/Getty Images)

It's a relatively wide open course with only tall mounds preventing view of nearly the entire course. Fescue grass and elevation changes, not U.S. Open-thick rough, will be the biggest challenge. At least getting to the green. Players who thought the greens were a challenge at Pinehurst No. 2 last year will be in for a rude awakening. Unpredictable would be one way to describe the putting surfaces at Chambers Bay. With massive undulations, getting an exact read on a putt is a near impossibility. The greens are so undulated, luck is going to play a significant factor in approach shots. Land in the right spot and a player's ball might track some 50 feet closer to the pin. Land an inch or two in the wrong direction and a potential birdie opportunity just turned into a difficult two-putt from 100 feet.

Like Whistling Straits before it, Chambers Bay will bring links golf to a major championship contest on this side of the pond.

Some pros already hate the course

We might have to wait until after the tournament to hear the real feelings of most of the field as many are putting on a smile and saying all the right things. Not all, however, are singing the praises of the course. Ryan Palmer was one of the first players to criticize the track.

"As far as the greens are concerned, it's not a championship golf course â€" not with the way some of the greens are and the pin placements they can put out there," Palmer said via USA Today. Ian Poulter, that same week, tweeted that he'd heard from his colleagues who had scouted the venue that it was a "farce."

Henrik Stenson called it a "tricked-up links course" while Charl Schwartzel questioned whether it should even be categorized as a golf course while also being very critical of the quality of the putting surfaces.

USGA executive director Mike Davis isn't concerned over the difficulties.

"I would contend that there is no way â€" no way â€" a player would have success here at Chambers Bay unless he really studies the golf course and learns it," Davis said, via the New York Post. "The idea of coming in and playing two practice rounds and having your caddie just walk it and using your yardage book, that person's done [and] will not win the US Open."

How will it play this week?

With so many possible layout changes round-to-round, it's impossible to know how Chambers Bay will play without knowing how it will be set up. At its easiest, the course is going to provide a difficult challenge. The difficulty level could approach nearly impossible with the right combination of tee and pin placements.

Chambers Bay is a bit unique in the fact two holes could play as either a par-4 or a par-5 depending on the round. The weather is projected to be pristine, so the greens will be fast and firm. There is the expectation the course could be difficult enough that an over-par score will take home the championship. So much will depend on how baked out this links-style course gets, and as you can see below, it's running like concrete early in the week.