Let the course be with you
| Eight-year-old Chambers Bay greens set to test big guns of the game
IT’S been a long time since so many have arrived at a US Open knowing so little about so much.
As a host course that is barely eight years old this year, Chambers Bay is untested at this level. As for what will take place between the first tee and the 18th green, the majority of the field has no clue what to expect.
What they do know is that architect Pete Dye shifted earth to transform a gravel quarry into a links reminiscent of the great courses of Britain. But whether heaven was also shifted, or instead a bit of hell, they’ll soon find out.
When US Golf Association executive director Mike Davis advised the world’s best professionals to “come early” to prepare themselves for what the course will be like, many took offence. World No 1 Rory McIlroy went so far as to cheekily ask what Davis’s handicap was that he should be making a statement like that on behalf of the world’s best professionals.
Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson instead decided to go and have a look. Woods said he “did his homework”, which already means this is a course to be taken seriously.
The locals who watched Mickelson’s practice round said he took more than 30 minutes on the first hole. He has likened this to the Old Course at St Andrews. And that was a course Mickelson never understood at first and had to grow to like.
The one man who does know something about this course is not even in the field. American Peter Uihlein won the 2010 US Amateur at Chambers Bay, the only other major tournament hosted here before this. Uihlein failed to qualify for the US Open, but loves the course for the creativity it demands.
Creativity has never before been a US Open word. Patience, grit, determination — those are US Open words. So this will indeed be an unconventional US Open. And you can bet the winner will be too.
It’s going to take a player with a different view of things to do well here.
Maybe somebody who plays the golf course differently to 90% of the world. Somebody like a left-hander perhaps. Somebody like Mickelson.
Mickelson has finished second in the US Open six times. More than a once-off victory in this major could, that stat says volumes about his ability to understand the US Open mindset. He’s also been second in the last two majors he has played (PGA Championship last year and this year’s Masters).
When Mickelson is thoroughly invested in his preparation for a major, which Chambers Bay seems to have awakened in him by virtue of its novelty, he is dangerous.
And he is seeking a place in history here, with only a US Open victory standing between him and becoming the sixth player in the game to win the career grand slam. Mickelson has a keen sense of golf history and will also be aware of the stage he has — what with Gary Player celebrating the 50th anniversary of him winning the career grand slam with his 1965 US Open triumph.
This could also be one of those quirky majors won by McIlroy on the back of his two consecutive missed cuts.
Masters champion Jordan Spieth played in that 2010 US Amateur and, granted, he shot 83 at Chambers Bay and didn’t make it through to the match play section of that event. But he knows what to expect, and has a caddie with him who used to work at Chambers Bay.
Rickie Fowler is another good bet. He finished in the top five in all four majors last year, and was 12th at the Masters and first at the Players Championship this year. And Dustin Johnson has a tear-jerking comeback story on Father’s Day he’d love to write.
South Africa has a talented group of Retief Goosen, Charl Schwartzel, Ernie Els, Thomas Aiken, Louis Oosthuizen, Garth Mulroy, Branden Grace, George Coetzee and Tjaart van der Walt in the field.
This could also be one of those quirky majors won by McIlroy