Country Club Of Charleston Is Hands-Down Winner

CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA | Long before the first score was posted, the champion had already been named. It was Country Club of Charleston, the course most of the contestants in the U.S. Women’s Open learned to respect and admire in the three practice days leading up to Thursday’s opening round. The 1925 Seth Raynor design (this is the first major championship ever contested on a Raynor course) is more than the pre-tournament favorite: it’s the hands-down winner.

But the process of accepting something new (most of the players had never set foot on a Raynor course) was an evolutionary one. On Monday, they weren’t so sure. “The fairways seem really wide and there’s not a lot of rough,” 2011 U.S. Women’s Open champion So Yeon Ryu said. “That’s not like a U.S. Open course.”

“It seems like it could favor the longer hitters,” said Daniel Taylor, caddie for and husband of Pernilla Lindberg. “The bunkers are set up so that if you fly it 250, you can cut off a lot of angles and have wedge in your hand a lot. That’s going to make a big d...