Tiger Woods describes Winged Foot as toughest course in the world
This week's US Open venue is one of the hardest golf courses on the planet, according to Tiger Woods.
Tiger Woods has described Winged Foot, this week's venue for the US Open, as one of the toughest courses in the world.
The 15-time major champion missed the cut back in 2006 when the US Open was last held at the New York course, although Woods had recently lost his father Earl and he didn't take long to regain his form, winning The Open a month later.
Geoff Ogilvy won his maiden major title at Winged Foot with a final score of 5-over par, which was the highest winning score in the US Open since 1974 and Woods believes low scores will once again be very unlikely as the major returns to the challenging venue.
"I think Winged Foot is right up there next to Oakmont and Carnoustie as far as just sheer difficulty without even doing anything to the course," said Woods, who begins his week at 1:07pm (UK time) on Thursday from the 1st tee alongside Collin Morikawa and Justin Thomas.
"I think those three golf courses, they can host major championships without ever needing to do anything to them. This one or Oakmont here is either one or two.
"I was able to come up here right before I played in Boston, take a look at the golf course, and I was able to get my sight lines. This golf course is going to be one of the more difficult ones. The winning scores here have never traditionally been very low, and I don't see that changing this week.
"The golf course is going to be hard. It depends on how difficult they want to set up these pins, give us a chance at it. But with the forecast, it's going to be difficult no matter what."
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There are 15 players in the field this week who also played at Winged Foot in 2006, including Woods, but the 44-year-old insists that there is no advantage to those who have course experience, due to how much the track has changed and how far technology has evolved.
"This golf course has changed a lot since then," he added. "Obviously the greens, they've all been redone, and most of the holes are a lot longer than when we played in '06, but technology has changed and the golf ball is going further.
"All the guys are hitting it further, so we're playing from about the same spots. It just seems like, with every green, you have to walk back a little bit further.
"It'll be interesting to see how much the USGA will cut the rough down and allow us to try and be a little bit more aggressive and get the ball up around the greens."
