US OPEN SECTIONAL QUALIFIER

As many of you know, tomorrow The Country Club of Naples will host the area's qualifying sectional tournament for the US Open. My staff has been busy preparing for the tournament for a month now. It's easy to host a tournament when the course is as close to tournament ready everyday as it can be.

To get tournament ready I started our in April by slowly lowering the heights of cut on our playing surfaces. The fairways, tees and approaches are cut tight to force the hopeful qualifiers to strike the ball perfectly in order to produce the ball spin they want. For those who miss hit the ball and land off the short grass, the roughs have been allowed to grow up to make it more difficult to strike the ball. A lot of player are going to that "flier lie."

The desired putting conditions for the qualifier is as fast and as firm as I can make them. Because we also have to accommodate member play, as well as reciprocal guest, I have limited the green speed to under 13 feet on the stimp-meter. Trust me, that's all the players will want. To get those speeds we have been double cutting and double rolling the greens twice a day for the last week, even Sat and Sun. Anybody watch the PGA tournament at
Sawgrass this weekend? Their greens are the same grass as ours, and ours are rolling just as good.

It should be a great tournament and spectators are welcome. So please come on out and watch the areas best play your beautiful course. Spectators are not allowed to use carts, so bring your walking shoes and stroll around and see what kind of score the players are shooting. You are allowed to walk the fairways and be around the greens. The tournament committee just asks that you not engage the players and give them plenty of space.

Hope to see you out at the course on Tues.