Spieth and Mickelson: Strategies Differ on How to Play Oakmont

What’s it going to take to tame Oakmont? Spieth thinks he knows. Mickelson thinks he has it figured out. They don’t agree.

Spieth and Mickelson, like everyone in the field this week, have a plan. But all the plans are fraught with challenges. Oakmont Country Club is so hard no one seems to be able to identify the worst part of it.

Some say the rough. Some fear the greens. Some say the bunkers are definitely a one shot penalty. Everybody has an idea of how to approach the venerable track, and they don’t all agree.

Take the 17^th hole for instance. It’s a drivable par four. Well, they say it’s a drivable par four.

Jordan Spieth and Phil Mickelson have different ideas how to play it, as they explained to media.

“I like driver right now. That right bunker, I hit from all different parts of it to all different pins and felt like if I hit the shot I’m capable of out of that bunker, then I was left with a birdie chance that would require two really solid shots from a layup and a really solid wedge just to get to that point,” Spieth explained.

But if the wind changes, so does his thinking.

“Downwind, I like that play getting it up near the green,” Spieth added. “Even though the left rough is brutal, you can still hit the green from it pending an average to good lie. If the wind changes and the tees are back, I think I’ll lay up, but it’s all going to depend on the conditions.”

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Mickelson has a different idea.

“There is no place around that green that is any good, okay?” Mickelson said with a boyish grin. “So I don’t care how far up the tee box is, I will lay up. Every hole out here plays over par. So to approach a hole from the tee thinking birdie is a mistake. There’s zero chance that I will go for that green.”

He made the shape of a zero with his hand and held it up for all to see and repeated the phrase zero chance.

One thing Spieth and Mickelson agree on is the importance of the shot off the tee.

“Fairways or first cut, I think, is the most important statistic for me to focus on this week,” Spieth said. “But it’s interesting, looking back, it wasn’t that important at the last U.S. Open, and I can’t seem to fathom why. I mean, out of the fairways I’ve missed in these practice rounds so far, I’ve maybe hit a green in regulation once when I haven’t been in the first cut.”

Spieth said his research showed of the top ten finishers in the tournament, one or two of them were actually in the top ten of fairways hit.

“That really shocked me. I mean, that goes against everything I’ve been saying which is you’ve got to put the ball in the fairway off the tee here,” Spieth added. “Or else it’s so hard to just hit it around the green, let alone on the green.”

Mickelson is 100 percent fairway-centric.

“The tee shot,” he said when asked what was the most part of his game this week. “There’s 18 of them. The tee shot’s most important on every hole. It is magnified this week.”

His reason, naturally, is the horrible Oakmont rough. So tough that in 2007 Mickelson injured his wrist.

“What happened in ’07 was I came a couple of weeks prior, and it was before they even cut it,” he explained. “And I hit way too many shots out of that stuff.”

This time, he’s not going to be fooled.

“There were dozens of other players who got hurt the week of the Open that particular year. I wasn’t the only one,” he continued. “This year, I’ve eliminated practicing out of the rough for that reason. I’d rather wait to get hurt during the tournament rather than before it.”

As far as the bunkers, they are definitely a penalty, at least according to Spieth.

Six weeks ago when Spieth played the course, he said the sand was compacted and a ball landing in the sand was not a hard shot. Not so this week.

“They have dumped so much sand into these bunkers, and now it is so tough to get a clean strike on the ball.,” he noted.

Mickelson agreed that they are difficult.

“The fairway bunkers aren’t important because you can’t recover from them,” he explained. “You have to just wedge out. They may as well be a pot bunker like in links golf. So fairway bunker play is not something I’ve even practiced. It’s not a relevant shot.”

What Mickelson did say was the biggest change is something that is not even on the course. It’s the change in what is allowed in grooves.

“In 2007, that was prior to the groove change in 2010. So when you were in the rough, you still had a chance to grip the ball, put a little spin on it chipping,” he said about the last time the U.S Open was here. “You do not have that opportunity now since that groove change. So chipping downhill is impossible. You had a chance the last time we were here, but it is impossible this year. You have to chip uphill because you cannot put enough spin to stop the ball on these greens with this much slope and as firm as they are. It’s just not possible.”