Something To Consider Next Time Around: Jim Nantz's Winged Foot Composite Course

The rescheduled 2020 U.S. Open was a success despite the horror of a six-under-par winning score and the West Course not getting the treatment from NBC’s budget-conscious approach vs. what CBS has been doing of late or what Fox’s Mark Loomis and crew might have provided with a normal budget.

As the USGA and Winged Foot discuss what’s next, including “anchor site” status according to Mike Dougherty’s reporting, another well-known member offered a pre-tournament suggestion for future Opens: a composite of the West and East Courses.

At the risk of getting called before some committee of point missers, CBS broadcaster Jim Nantz offered a way to better highlight the club’s more soulful East Course while retaining the best of the West.

From his Golf Digest column that is now online:

When Winged Foot hosts the U.S. Open next time around, I’d love to see a full representation of its two courses. I’m talking a composite of the famous and familiar West Course, and the lesser known but equally (some say surpassingly) magnificent East Course. On the surface it sounds like a radical idea, but I’ve long believed that a combination of the two would result in a design that is formidable, beautiful, sensible and unique in major-championship golf.

I’ve gone through the course a few times and I think its sensational. Yes, it’s only 7,266 yards and the driving range situation is complicated, but I only see one problem no one could have imagined pre-tournament: 370-yard plus drives at what would be Nantz’s “Dream Course” finishing hole, the West’s ninth hole.

Converted back to a par-5 this year, the longer hitters recorded some epic drives and faced huge decisions between wedge or nine-iron approaches, with Dustin Johnson capping the madness by launching one 418-yards Sunday.

That’s an issue for the governing bodies.

More impressively, in Nantz’s composite course the famous 10th hole West remains the 10th, the 1st the first—it’s a very severe green you know—and the current 18th West becomes the ninth. No one will shed a tear about that.

There is one long (200 yard) walk from the proposed 12th West to the proposed 13th (which is the fantastic mid-length par-4 15th West). This very minor annoyance sets up a stretch of East Course gems that would become the composite’s 14th to 17th holes. The East’s par-3 17th, a favorite hole of many, retains its number but a newfound prominence in deciding the U.S. Open outcome.

Nantz has given the USGA something to think about for that next time the U.S. Open heads to Winged Foot.

Check it out here at GolfDigest.com.