Ghosts of 2004 are stalking US Open fairways
Shinnecock Hills was ‘a joke’ last time it was host. James Corrigan fears that the USGA might repeat its errors
‘A deafening brain fart,’ was Craig Stadler’s verdict on the conditions
It was my first US Open and I expected it to be tough, but I didn’t expect it to be a total joke.” So Ian Poulter told me recently when he was asked for his recollection of that infamous major 14 years ago.
He later winced as he was encouraged to cast his mind forward to next week’s return to Shinnecock Hills. “They can’t make the same mistakes again,” Poulter said. “Can they?”
This is the question which has been gaining increasing volume as the 118th staging of the US Open has loomed into focus. Believe it, the bells of 2004 have been tolling ominously across the range. It was the week when the United States Golf Association came under unprecedented attack from the game’s greatest for rendering a course that invariably appears in the world’s top 10 all but unplayable.
Professionals attempted to convert three-footers and watched in disbelief as balls rolled off greens. They actually took aim at bunkers to avoid surfaces so slick they brought to mind Sam Snead’s old line: “They are so fast I have to hold my putter over the ball and hit it with the shadow.”
Except nobody was laughing. Certainly not Tiger Woods. “They lost control of the course,” he said. “It’s terrible – this is our national championship. This is not the way it’s supposed to be played.”
The USGA predictably went on its shameless defensive, blaming a cold front and drying gusts. In truth, with that destructive greenkeeping mixture of five parts ignorance to five parts arrogance, the bigwigs had actually seen the weekend forecasts and instructed the poor dolts in jumpsuits to carry on double-cutting and applying the rollers.
On the Sunday, the stats showed that more than four shots in five failed to hold on the seventh green. The portents were clear in the very first three-ball as two players made triple-bogeys on the 189-yarder, and as USGA error compounded error, the farce intensified with the average score rising to 78.7
“A deafening brain fart,” was Craig Stadler’s verdict, while Ernie Els declared: “This can never be allowed to happen ever again.”
But as Poulter indicated, this is the USGA we are talking about, so, given an unfair wind, it just might – indeed, at the very next time of asking.
For an approximation of the anxiety levels in the locker room, go no further than Phil Mickelson. Last Sunday, the left-hander who posted the third of his six US Open runners-up spots behind Retief Goosen that week, was quizzed about the seventh. “I think it’s a great hole until the USGA gets hold of it,” he said.
He was probed further. “Are you concerned that could happen again this time?” “I’m concerned every time they get hold of it,” Mickelson replied.
His comments were inevitably billed as a “warning” to the USGA. They were a heartfelt plea. Mickelson was practically begging the most stubborn sports body in existence finally to learn the lessons. It insists it has, but as anyone who was at the mockery that was Chambers Bay three years ago will confirm, the USGA is to learning lessons what the Incredible Memory Man is to forgetting his PIN.
Led by Mike Davis, a character so beholden to his own wisdom that every time he spots more than five people at a bus-stop he stops to deliver a speech, the USGA is solely interested in looking smart in making the game’s best wrestle with par. And that is a crying shame. It means we head to wonderful Shinnecock as much in trepidation as anticipation.