USGA needs to get it right at U.S. Open
SOUTHAMPTON, N.Y. – Pressure is standing on the first tee at Shinnecock Hills, staring down at the tumbling, heaving expanse of fescue and fairway below, getting ready to hit the opening shot in the U.S. Open.
Like the South Fork wind that buffets this storied course, U.S. Open pressure won’t abate until a player’s final putt drops – whether it’s Friday and he misses the cut, or Sunday and he makes history.
But the 156 golfers who will tee it up at Shinnecock Hills in the first round of the 118th U.S. Open on Thursday aren’t the only ones feeling the heat.
The United States Golf Association is under pressure to deliver a controversyfree championship on a course it all but ruined in 2004 and in the wake of U.S. Opens at Chambers Bay and Erin Hills that received less-than-stellar reviews, sandwiched around a rules nightmare at Oakmont.
The golf course and the way it is set up for the Open has been part of the story at least since the “Massacre at Winged Foot” in 1974, when the USGA overreacted, many believe, to Johnny Miller’s closing 63 the year before.
It’s easy to be critical of U.S. Open venues, especially in hindsight. What’s not easy is making par on every hole a coveted score without turning the championship into “carnival golf,” as Phil Mickelson put it Monday.
“I think it’s a very fine line,” Mickelson said, “and it’s not a job I would want. I know that the USGA is doing the best they can to find that line and a lot of times they do and sometimes they cross over it. But it’s not an easy job. It’s easy for all of us to criticize.”
In recent years, the USGA has stepped outside the box and taken the national championship to new courses and public venues, some of which have worked and some of which have not. Chambers Bay in University Place, Wash., in 2015 was not well-received by the players or many TV viewers who tuned in and thought they were watching golf being played on the moon.
Last year, Erin Hills, 35 miles northwest of downtown Milwaukee, was left defenseless by rain that softened extrawide fairways and day after day of nearly windless conditions. No matter that it was the longest U.S. Open course in history. Brooks Koepka won at 16-under, Justin Thomas fired a third-round 63 and 31 players broke par for the week.
“Last year, the fairways were wide. There wasn’t much of a penalty for missing drives,” said 1997 British Open champion Justin Leonard, now a Golf Channel analyst. “The fairways were kind of soft. There was no strategy off the tee. You hit driver, you hit it as hard as you could, and then went on and attacked it from there.”
It was a no-win situation for the USGA. Erin Hills was a new venue and nearly a complete unknown. Had the fairways been 10 yards narrower and a normal June wind strafed the course, an over-par score might have won the championship and players would have howled that it was unfair.
“The difference between a soft, still U.S. Open – in other words, it’s been raining, there’s no wind – versus firm and windy could be as much as 20 strokes,” said USGA executive director Mike Davis. “I’m not exaggerating.”
Oakmont (Pa.) wasn’t the problem in 2016. It was a messy rules situation involving Dustin Johnson, who thankfully went on to win the title, or we’d still be talking about how the USGA screwed him. The timing of the U.S. Open’s return to Shinnecock Hills, then, couldn’t be better. One of five founding members of the USGA, the private club on Long Island is considered by many to be the premier championship course on American soil.
At 7,440 yards and with deep fescue rough flanking the fairways, Shinnecock tests players’ length and accuracy off the tee. The fairways have been widened since 2004 but many are tilted and difficult to hit. Short-game guru Dave Pelz said the greens had the most slope of any he’d ever measured.