Welcome to the 62^nd U.S. Women’s Open Championship!

Welcome to the 62^nd U.S. Women’s Open Championship! Some of us staffers have been here for a few days setting up the course and preparing for the championship. It’s amazing to see how things change in a day - grandstands going up; TV towers being assembled over night; cables being put down all over the place; it’s all so cool to see. Every year, (and I’ve been doing this 15 years) I’m still amazed at the enormity of it all. The U.S. Women’s Open and women’s golf has been growing by leaps and bounds and this has affected some our Local Rules. Public interest increase means more towers, more grandstands, or as we call it in Rules speak, more Temporary Immoveable Obstructions.

To help our officials we put in some stakes to help determine the nearest drop zone (as we call it) or ball drop (as many others call it).

These stakes can be any ole color as long as we describe them within our Local Rules for the championship.

These mid point stakes began to be used at the Women’s Open at Cherry Hills. As you can see, we were into candy canes that year.

Then we realized we could use some creativity with the color selection. Last year, the U.S. Women’s Open was held at Newport Country Club. They have their famous hole flags and well, we extended the hole flag colors onto the "mid point" stakes.

Keeping with the good times, we used yellow and black mid point stakes at this year’s U.S. Open at Oakmont.

At this years U.S. Women’s Open we are demonstrating a little Carolina pride. It doesn’t hurt when one of the members of the Rules staff is a Tar Heel.

The U.S. Senior Open will be held in Kohler Wisconsin next week. Can you guess the color mid point stakes they will use in Packers nation?

Wendy Uzelac

USGA Director of Regional Affairs, Midwest Region