National Post (National Edition)
COURSE CORRECTION
Chambers Bay, home of this year’s U.S. Open is a yellow-brown, shaggy-bunkered, ripple-chipped puzzle, and it’s up to the world’s best golfers to figure it out
U.S. Open golfers should worry about more than each other.
It’s a given that no player in this U.S. Open field has attracted more headlines than the course on which it will be played.
The sheer volume of speculation, mystification and frustration over the quirky properties of Chambers Bay and the multitude of ways the United States Golf Association could alter its configuration overnight — par-4s turned into par5s and vice versa, a 229-yard par-3 with a 100-foot drop becoming a 217-yard uphill par-3 depending on which tee box is used, total yardage varying from 7,200 to 7,700 — has overshadowed all else in the days leading to Thursday’s opening round.
That’s because no course in U.S. Open history has had the capacity to change its nature as readily as this one. Tee boxes are only vaguely defined. Drop a pair of tee blocks somewhere down the fairway, and — presto! — it brings a whole different set of hazards into play.
On some holes, the only way to tell the end of the fairway from the beginning of the green is a line of white dots painted on the fescue.
But now the guessing ends and the problem-solving begins. Someone is going to figure out this yellow-brown, shaggy-bunkered, ripple-chipped puzzle that Robert Trent Jones Jr. carved out of an abandoned gravel quarry.
Someone with imagination, and an even temperament. Someone who can immediately rinse a bad shot, or bad result of a good shot, out of his memory. Someone who makes a load of eight-foot putts.
“The course is incredibly fast and fiery, as pure a links golf course as I think I’ve ever seen on this side of the Atlan- tic Ocean,” said 2010 champion Graeme McDowell.
“It’s got a few holes which have me scratching my head, but mostly I think it’s a fantastic test. There’s going to be a lot of long distance scrambling and putting. I think it’s going to look fantastic on television.”
Perhaps the idea that this is really an Open Championship played on U.S. soil — a sentiment expressed by almost every player — should mean past winners and frequent contenders in Great Britain’s signature championship ought to be favoured.
So, Rory McIlroy, Phil Mickelson, Ernie Els, Louis Oosthu- izen? All possibilities. Darren Clarke won in 2011 at Royal St. Georges, but that was pretty much conceded to be a oneoff, and Tiger Woods’s game is so badly off the rails, his three wins on British soil have nothing to do with now.
Jordan Spieth, Adam Scott, Justin Rose, all major champions, and Rickie Fowler, who loves links golf and finished top-5 in all four majors a year ago, then won The Players in May? Good bets, all.
Television, assuming the new kids at FOX have the same tastes as NBC, would salivate at a McIlroy-Fowler duel. Everyone is shooting at the world No. 1.
“Well, we look at him as the best player in the world right now,” Fowler said of McIlroy. “He’s proven that. He’s been playing well. Yeah, he did play well in the majors last year. I got him on aggregate, but he’s holding two trophies, so he got me there.
“Personally, I want to go up against him when he is playing well, to go have some fun and see who comes out on top.”
Alternatively, an out-of-the-blue rally by Mickelson, who turned 45 Tuesday, would be a popular result. Even though he’s been U.S. Open runner-up six times without ever winning it, his victory at dry, hard Muirfield in Scotland two years ago means it’s not out of the question he could solve Chambers Bay, too, and complete his career Grand Slam here.
“This is a great opportunity for him,” said his buddy, Fowler. “He’s still got plenty of power. He’s still got all the shots in the bag. You come up with a short game shot and you’re not really going to ask anyone else other than him to hit it if there was a must make up-and-down. Yeah, he did turn 45, but I’m not looking to see him go away anytime soon.”
Like many another major since Phil and Tiger began leaving the door open, though, the odds are Chambers Bay will only identify the man who plays the best, not necessarily the best player.
The millennium began quite differently. From 2000 through 2010, Woods and Mickelson won 16 of 44 majors. Since then: one of 21.
Ten of those 21 have gone to first-time major champions.
The guy who won the U.S. Amateur here in 2010, Peter Uihlein, didn’t qualify for this championship. A kid who didn’t make it out of the strokeplay portion that year, shooting 83 in his last competitive round here, won the Masters in April.
That would be Jordan Spieth.
So the form chart is useful, except when it’s not.
“You can’t win a Grand Slam unless you win the first, so I’m the only one with that opportunity this year,” said the still 21-year-old Texan.
It’s possible. But this week, at this place, what isn’t?
It’s got a few holes which have me scratching my head