What is a Barranca? US Open golfers hope they don’t find out.

Not many major golf championships have given fans the chance to expand their vocabulary as well, but this year’s US Open at Los Angeles Country Club could do just that. Over the four days of the tournament, starting on Thursday, broadcasters – and perhaps the golfers too – routinely expect to use a word that may be unfamiliar to many in the international viewing public.

The word is barranca — pronounced “burr-ahng-kuh” — and it describes a narrow, winding, steep-walled gully or river canyon typical of Southern California landscapes.

The barranca on the LA Country Club’s North Course comes into play repeatedly throughout the 18 holes, especially as protection in and around the greens. Errant golf balls landing in the barranca may be unplayable and result in a one-stroke penalty. In other cases, you can expect competitors to run down the barranca in hopes of saving their golf balls. It could be a successful recovery trick, or it could just make for a good shot – a golfer dipped a few feet below the fairway flounders away to try to make par.

However, the LA Country Club barranca is far from a random course layout curiosity. It serves an important, effective drainage role during rainy seasons and adds a natural, whimsical aesthetic to the course design, which originated in the 1920s. In the 2010s, the barranca, which meanders throughout the site with tributaries flowing extending in several directions, but mostly grassy. A renovation of the grounds, completed in 2017, by the golf architect Gil Hanse, his design partner, Jim Wagner, and a design consultant, Geoff Shackelford, restored the barranca to its original appearance – and tactical purpose.

It first comes into play on the second hole, a par 4 of 497 yards, where players must make a long approach stroke over the barranca. The golfers will encounter the barranca five more times on the front nine.

On the 520-yard, par-4 17th, Hanse removed several trees so the serpentine barranca would be visible from the tee, reminding players of the danger lurking. It could test the nerves of the tournament leaders as they go into the penultimate hole of the championship in Sunday’s final round.

“The barranca just flows through,” John Bodenhamer, the chief championships officer of the United States Golf Association, which runs the US Open, said Wednesday. “There’s a sparkle to how it’s used.”

Bodenhamer added that three feet of water flowed through the barranca when he visited the site in March. Last month the water was still as high as 60 cm. But with a limited amount of rainfall in June, Shackelford said Wednesday, the barranca was now mostly sandy or dry, a condition expected and desired.

“You’ll see players play like they were meant to be,” Bodenhamer said. “You will see a lot of heroic shots, a lot of excitement. The barranca is simply stunning.”

And perhaps educational, especially for those who want to expand their vocabulary.