⏩ U.S. Open notebook: Paula Creamer hopes to shake off rust in Bay Area homecoming.
Paula Creamer’s nostalgic fling ends at 1:40 p.m. Thursday, in a sense, when she steps to the No. 1 tee at the Olympic Club — maybe not the best place to jumpstart a comeback.
Creamer, a 10time LPGA winner and the 2010 U.S. Women’s Open champion, lived in Pleasanton until age 14. She landed a special exemption into this week’s Open, partly because of her pastchampion status and partly because of her Bay Area roots.
She has embraced the homecoming on many levels. Creamer smiled Wednesday as she spoke of driving directly to Togo’s, her favorite sandwich shop, after her flight landed in San Francisco on Saturday.
“It’s great to be back home,” she said.
Creamer, 34, has played in only one LPGA event since October 2019, given a lingering wrist injury. She shot 7674 and missed the cut two weeks ago at the Pure Silk Championship in Virginia.
So the Women’s Open on the Lake Course, one of the game’s toughest tracks, might be asking too much as she reacclimates to tournament golf.
“My game is actually really good right now,” Creamer said. “… It’s more the process of picking shots and seeing different angles around the greens. I haven’t had that for quite a while. The more tournaments I get, the better I’ll play.”
Women in turf: Troy Flanagan, the Olympic Club’s director of golf course maintenance, had an idea soon after the club landed this Women’s Open — recruit female volunteers to work on the maintenance crew during a typically hectic week.
That idea led to 28 women from around the country, including as far away as New York and Florida, pitching in to prepare the Lake Course for its latest trip across the national stage.
“I thought it would be cool to have as many women volunteers as I could get,” Flanagan said. “It’s such a maledominated industry. Then it kind of grew, and I started to understand the networking possibilities. What a great opportunity for these women to get together and advance their careers.”
There are 110 people in all working on the course this week, including many from other clubs and courses in the Bay Area. The group of 28 women includes superintendents, assistant superintendents, academic researchers and one architect.
They are doing everything from mowing fairways to spotwatering greens, Flanagan said, under the guidance of the USGA.
Rough stuff: Several players marveled at the length (2¾ inches) and thickness of the rough on the Lake Course. Throw in cool air and wind gusts expected to reach 20 mph, and preOpen chatter includes a winning score well above par.
John Bodenhamer, the USGA’s senior managing director for championships, seemed undeterred Wednesday.
“We want it to be the U.S. Open,” he said. “The U.S. Open is hard.”
Bodenhamer, who supervises course setup, must try to strike a delicate balance between challenging players and embarrassing them. The USGA made it work in previous Women’s Opens at storied venues known for men’s Opens: Creamer won at 3under par at Oakmont in 2010, and Michelle Wie West won at 2under at Pinehurst in ’14.
The winning score in U.S. Opens at Olympic has ranged from 7over par in 1955 (Jack Fleck) to 3under in 1987 (Scott Simpson).
USGA officials, incidentally, expect crowds of between 2,000 and 5,000 people each day this week. That’s more than originally projected, before state and city officials eased pandemic restrictions.