The USGA has a different idea.

Often accused of punishing golfers for missing fairways, the USGA is tempting the best in the game to go ahead and fire away at No. 2. Use the driver, go ahead and blast away from the tee boxes.

No half-stroke penalty for missing the narrow fairways. No-suck-it-up-and-wedge-the-ball out of six-inch rough.

Other Opens have featured that penalty for missing fairways, putting a premium on the tee shot.

Decide the game of golf right there, off the tee, the USGA said. Hitting fairways. Miss the fairway; chop it out of the rough with a wedge.

Not at No. 2.

Here, the rough will be a mere three inches thick. For all four rounds. No USGA head games with the players. Promise.

"The rough will be topped off at three inches each day," Trey Holland, chairman of the USGA championship committee, said.

"I think you’ll see bigger numbers because of the rough," Davis Love III said. "With normal USGA rough you hit it in, hack it out and hit it on the green and one or two putt."

The USGA committee members, and most of the golfers playing in the Open, are savvy and intense people.

What is the strength of No. 2? It was a question someone at the USGA must have asked.

The greens, came the answer.

The best golfers in the world can dial in an ordinary green when they are within 150 yards. From 200 yards, the greens had better be firmer than the hand of a strict parent, or else the players will simply do what they wish. Shot after shot will go plunk, right near the hole location.

Boring.

Unless the players are seduced by Donald Ross’ rambling stroll through the Sandhills, tempted by the gentle curves and dips, and the wink of the come-hither greens.

"You can get playable lies out of the rough," Payne Stewart said. "But that’s kind of what the golf course wants you to think:

"Oh boy, I’ve got a good lie; I’m going to whip it right on the green. That’s when all the excitement begins."

Tempted to go for the green even though a player’s drive may have found the three-inch deep rough, even though he may have a "hot lie" or a "flier" in the player’s vernacular. Tempted to attack a course whose reputation has been built on the back of the humped greens.

Tempted by the siren call of a birdie.

"Now you have a problem," Greg Norman said. "The thinking is I can get it on from there. But if I get a flier, I’m going to go over the back of the green.

"They’ve done a great job of keeping the rough at a certain height where you can get aggressive, but that aggression could come out and bite you at some time during the week."

David Duval, bitten by a hot teapot earlier this week, resulting in a burned thumb, recognizes the danger of the siren’s call.

The rough may give the players a "false sense of security," Duval said.

"It looks to me like the reasoning is to try to get players to go ahead and try to hit some shots that will run into greens," Duval said. "That’s when you can get in more trouble.

"If you hit some shots out of it, you might catch the fliers that really go a long way off line or a long way over the greens. I think that’s when you’re bringing bogeys, and maybe a double bogey, into play."

Seems like the USGA is adapting to the course, instead of adapting the course to the USGA. Donald Ross’ creation, although 90 years old, is a new breed of Open challenge.

"The golf course architecture lends itself to this setup, whereas others do not," Holland said.

Ross felt the game began with shots holding the greens. So make the greens the challenge.

Tell the players to go ahead and attack No. 2 greens from the rough. Test their patience; see if they enjoy crawling off the back of the greens mulling the possibilities awaiting them if they are long and gone.

"Now you get a guy that hits a rocket over the third green and he might be talking to the guys down on the fifth green, deciding who’s away," Love said. "So you could see some interesting stuff.

"Hit a little flier over the 14th green, which I’ve done in the North-South, and it’s down at the 10th fairway. You could see some big, big numbers because of that."

Now that isn’t different at all for an Open.