She won’t be playing in the U.S. Women’s Open this week, but Shannon Rouillard has thought her way around Riviera Country Club too many times to count.
As the USGA’s championship director for the tournament, Rouillard decides where the tees and pins should go, how wide the fairways play, and all the other course setup inside the ropes.
“Our goal is to identify a national champion,” she said. “But also to test shot-making, course management, mental and physical resolve. It should be the toughest test [the competitors] see all year long. They have come to expect that from us.”
This is the first time Riviera has played host to this major championship, and it’s a homecoming for Rouillard, who lives and works in New Jersey but grew up in Covina and has spent years preparing for this week. That meant attending the Genesis Invitational at Riviera for multiple years, studying the 2017 U.S. Amateur held there, and poring over hole locations, yardage books and old course markings.
She embraces the complexities of the course, the attention to detail, and the design work of legendary architect George Thomas, who drew up 15 different routings for the parcel of land before deciding on the current one.
Rouillard oversaw two significant changes to the traditional Riviera layout. On No. 4, which Ben Hogan once called “the greatest par-three hole in America,” the main tee played too long for the women, and the alternate tee was misaligned and distorted the geometry of the hole. Rouillard asked the club about building a new tee, and Riviera took it a step further by performing an “interpretive restoration.”
That entailed adding new tees — the hole will play 192 yards — enlarging the green back to its original size, recapturing hole locations that had been lost over the decades, and recontouring the area just over the front bunker but short of the green to provide a “kick slope” canted toward the green. That was more faithful to the original design of Thomas.
No. 8 at Riviera is called the “Lido” hole in reference to the split-fairway design inspired by the famous Lido course on Long Island, N.Y. From the tee, you have a choice to hit down the wide and welcoming left fairway or the narrower right one, which is a more direct path to the green. Between them sits a dry ravine, or barranca.
The USGA widened the right fairway, which had narrowed to about 22 yards. PGA Tour data from the Genesis showed virtually all the men played down the left fairway. Rouillard wanted to create more of a decision on the tee.
“Our goal is to bring this hole to life,” she said, “the architecture to life through this setup plan. We want players to think about going down this right side.”
Rouillard has loved golf since her father handed her a club when she was 15. The 1990 graduate of South Hills High was passionate about learning the game, walked on to the golf team at the University of Oregon and eventually earned a scholarship. She played a year of professional golf on what is now the Epson Tour, and later coached the women’s team at Oregon for nearly a decade before joining the USGA in 2010.
The allure of this assignment, in her home city, is undeniable.
“The women deserve to play these iconic venues like the men have played for many, many years,” Rouillard said. “The women are able to showcase and highlight the architecture that these great architects were trying to achieve. We are able to bring them to life because the features are in play for the best female players.”
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