Keep the balls out of the galleries

We're well into the second round of the U.S. Open at Winged Foot and Phil Mickelson just pulled his opening tee shot way to the right. Well, actually, he just hit his second shot and recently pulled his tee shot and is not taking his shot for birdie. Anyway, as has been well-documented, the rough at Winged Foot has been grown to 5-8 inches to penalize errant shots. Mickelson's ball wasn't in the fairway or the 1st (intermediate) cut that is 6 feet wide on either side of the fairway. It wasn't in the next 20 feet of the 1st cut of primary rough, which is a meager 3.5 inches. It should have been in the deep stuff and he should have been hacking at it with his only goal being to get it back in the short grass. However, because his shot was so far away from the fairway, it landed in grass that had been trampled by the gallery. The result: Mickelson had a clean lie from about 150 yards and was able to knock the ball up within a few feet of the front of the green. The idea behind the graduated rough system was to have an increasingly bad penalty for an increasingly bad shot.

I'm not taking a shot at Mickelson, he just happened to be the person I saw benefit from this system. Mickelson just pulled his 2nd tee shot to the right, not as bad as on #1. However, he didn't get it to the gallery, so he's in the deep stuff. Ok, let's get back on topic. There are also grand stands behind the greens on some of the holes. Tiger Woods hit a ball into them yesterday. He had to play his next shot from a designated drop area just in front of them. The USGA should have drop areas for wayward tee shots that end up in the galleries. The players should have to drop their balls into the deep rough, rather than benefit by being able to play off areas of trampled grass. I can't be the first person to think of this.

One alternative would be to get rid of galleries altogether, but I doubt that is going to happen. All the tv viewers would be upset too, we wouldn't get to hear people yell "Get in the hole" on tee shots. What would we do without such brilliant commentary ... oh wait, we get similar stuff from the "professionals."