The Event
The Country Club at Brookline hosts the 122nd US Open this weekend, with three Irish men set to tee it up in the third major of the year.
Seamus Power is going to fly the Waterford flag in Massachusetts and he comes to the event with a wealth of experience at the top table of PGA Tour golf.
The Touraneena native has already delivered solid performances at the preceding majors in 2022. Having finished tied for 27th at the Masters, tied for 9th at the PGA Championship and a 33rd place finish at the unofficial major Players Championship Seamus will be hoping for another top-end of the leaderboard performance this weekend.
The Country Club poses some unique challenges for the field with worryingly small greens and perilous rough surrounding the fairways.
The Waterford Man
Seamus boasts some season stats that make for pleasant reading when it comes to his chances in America this weekend. He's 9th overall in greens hit in regulation and that may well prove to be a key factor towards his success or failure in the tournament.
Anybody who finds themselves in the rough is going to have a torrid time giving themselves a follow-up shot, and in reality, anybody who finds the rough is unlikely to have any hope of contending.
The Course
The course at Brookline is the oldest in the US, but it has undergone wholesale change since 2009 with a significant portion of the treeline felled and the minuscule greens having been expanded somewhat.
Famed golf architect Gil Hanse was to the forefront of the redesign of the course in the Bay State and he describes some of the challenges players will face, "It's the small, tilty greens. I mean, they are tiny. I know they're bigger than Pebble Beach, but they are probably the second-smallest set of greens for major championships aside from Pebble. I think, you've got to play good golf shots in there"
Aside from the tricky putting surfaces, the field will also have to contend with blind tee shots and uphill approaches.
The Numbers
While the course layout provides a stern test, the Waterford man Power may be well placed to deal with it. His form so far this season has seen him earn 5 top 10 finishes, but he'll be hoping that the missed cut at the Memorial Tournament in his most recent outing is put behind him.
He does rank in the top 50 for scrambling stats and may well have to lean on that these next four days as the run-offs of those tiny greens can leave little room for error on the follow-up shot.
The Irish Interests
Seamus will be out on the course from half six Irish time with Min Woo Lee and Joohyung Kim.
Former US Open Champion Rory McIlroy meanwhile goes in search of his second US Open title having previously won the event in 2011, while Offaly's Shane Lowry is hoping to add the US Open to his Open Championship win in 2019.
