Fix up Chambers Bay, then give it another U.S. Open

UNIVERSITY PLACE, Wash. —The course that was built for a U.S. Open needs a makeover. And when that’s finished, it can fix the greens.

Chambers Bay deserves another shot at hosting the U.S. Open for no other reason than the finish it produced. Jordan Spieth, with a big assist from Dustin Johnson, did more to put this course on the map than views of Puget Sound or the design of Robert Trent Jones Jr.

For all the complaints, the lasting image is the guy holding the trophy.

It helps when the winner is a 21-year-old with polished manners and a tenacious short game who made ‘Grand Slam’ a summer topic for only the third time in the last 50 years. Throw in some heartache and it’s an ending that won’t be forgotten. The real mystery is how Johnson’s five-iron into the 18th green didn’t come off that slope instead of leaving a 12-foot eagle putt that was like putting down a luge track.

Golf courses don’t always define great players. Sometimes, it’s the other way around. Valhalla cannot be considered on the A-list of championship courses. But it gave us Tiger Woods winning in a playoff for his third straight major and Rory McIlroy holding off Phil Mickelson, Rickie Fowler and Henrik Stenson in the dark.

The greens at Chambers Bay were terrible. Everyone could see that. But they weren’t that much worse than Pebble Beach in 2010. They were only slightly more dead than Shinnecock Hills in 2004. Go back and watch that 12-foot putt Woods made at Torrey Pines to get into a playoff and try to count the bounces.

This is the U.S. Open, not the Immaculate Open. It is meant to be the toughest test in golf.

The overhaul has more to do with an aspect of the U.S. Open that was sadly overlooked this year — the spectators. For 50 years, the only way to see a U.S. Open in the Pacific Northwest was on television. And once the fans got onto the course, they were so far from the action the players looked about as big as they once did on a 19-inch TV screen with a knob to change the channels.

It’s worth going back to Chambers Bay no matter who won. The USGA wants to move its championship around the country. The Pacific Northwest had to wait 120 years. It’s also important for the U.S. Open to be held on a public course every now and then, so that ticks two boxes.