How Bryson DeChambeau, Cam Smith’s father and Tasmanian greenkeeper Craig Walker provided an epic US Open finish
A Tasmanian greenkeeper has revealed how he inadvertently contributed to one of the all-time great bunker shots that led to Bryson DeChambeau’s US Open triumph at Pinehurst Resort.
DeChambeau’s spectacular 50-metre strike from the sand on the 18th hole of Pinehurst No.2 set up a four-foot putt for par, which he duly converted to beat Rory McIlroy by a single stroke and capture his second US Open.
However, the bunker shot would have been all the more improbable if not for Devonport Country Club superintendent Craig Walker.
He arrived in North Carolina to work as a volunteer and the sole Australian on the maintenance crew of 130 for the championship. Walker paid his own way to Pinehurst with a $5,000 grant from Devonport CC along with the $5,000 bursary from winning the 2023 Excellence in Golf Course Management Award – the highest accolade from the Australian Sports Turf Managers Association.
After an induction meeting with Pinehurst No.2 superintendent John Jeffreys III, Walker was tasked with ‘quality control’ of the maintenance team on the front nine holes for the week – overseeing greens mowing and rolling, surrounds cutting, fairway cutting, blowers and bunker raking each morning.
As such, Walker’s role was to walk every square inch of the front nine and report ‘call-backs’ via radio for everything that’s not right. He was literally the last person in front of the first group to tee off in practice and tournament rounds on all seven days.
Yet while the couch tees, fairways, greens and surrounds were in pristine condition, there was concern about the look of the 117 bunkers. In particular, the ‘teeth’ of the steel bunker rakes were leaving distinct furrows that resulted in balls sinking into the sand. Pinehurst No.2 assistant superintendent Eric Mabie, who was charged with quality control for the back nine holes, wasn’t happy with the appearance.
That’s when Walker offered a solution. After sounding out Cam Smith’s father – who said the bunker sand was nice, but the finish wasn’t pretty – Walker used Des Smith’s feedback to ask if he could try a different approach.
“I said these steel rakes are digging in too much. You’ve got stuff floating on the top of it,” Walker recalls. “In the end, [Eric] said, ‘Can you rake one and show me what you would do in Australia?’”
Walker grabbed a 600-millimetre plastic rake and demonstrated the technique in the large greenside bunker on Pinehurst’s ninth hole, giving it an Australian-style finish of smooth bunker faces and bases. To which Mabie said: “That’s exactly how we need it.”
So on championship eve, they went and purchased “two ute-loads” of plastic rakes from a Lowes hardware store, the equivalent of Bunnings Warehouse.
Which poses the question as to how difficult DeChambeau’s bunker shot would have been on the 72nd hole if the maintenance crew had persisted with the steel rakes?
“It would have been one of two things: it would have either been sitting right up on top of a ridge or sitting down in a furrow,” says Walker, who holds a plus-1 handicap. “It certainly wouldn’t have been sitting as even at it was.”
As it was, that smooth lie on the 72nd hole allowed DeChambeau to produce one of the epic moments in US Open history. Afterwards as part of his victory celebration, DeChambeau greeted the Pinehurst maintenance crew who had been on call from 4am until 10pm throughout the week.
Alas, Walker didn’t get the chance to toast the Crushers GC captain. He left Pinehurst at midday on Sunday to board a flight back to Australia from where he watched DeChambeau’s last-hole heroics.
“It’s the bunker shot that no one wants. A 40, 50-metre bunker shot. Do you pick it clean, or do you try to chunk-and-run it? He did chunk-and-run it and did it well,” Walker says.
“Even when Bryson knocked it to four feet, there was no way that was a gimme. That green was just so dry and on a lean and so fast. The only good thing was he left it in the best possible place he could, [which] was below the hole.”
Of course, we’ll never know what would have transpired in the 124th US Open had the maintenance crew stuck with those steel bunker rakes. Nor will we know how DeChambeau would have handled a ball sitting down in a furrow on the 72nd hole.
“It could have been a whole different situation for him to play that shot,” Walker ponders. “I like to think he was good enough.”
Getty images: jared C. Tilton; courtesy of craig walker
