tschu
Banned
Well, it's that time again. Time for my favorite tournament of the year (sorry, Masters).
Time for the hair-pulling, rough-chunking, putter-slamming fun.
Time for a 670-yard par 5. A 520, 498, and 489 yard par 4s. 15-on-the-stimpmeter concrete greens. 6.5 inch rough in the deep cuts.
The U.S. Open.
Word on the street (and interwebs) is that Mike Davis has done a great job producing a tough, fair test. Barring catastrophic rain softening which put a damper (haha sorry) on last year's Open and let the field run amok at Congressional, this Open should play fairly tough. My semi-informed opinion is that the winning score will be around 3-under, give or take.
Let's get to know the venue: Olympic Club in San Francisco. It has hosted several major events, the last US Open being here in 1998. Since then, an insect infestation has killed almost 500 trees on the property, which, combined with numerous other course changes and technology changes in equipment, will make this event play much, much different than the one 14 years ago.
The last time the U.S. Open was here was in 1998, a tournament won in huge come-from-behind fashion by Lee Janzen over the late Payne Stewart. Shot of the 18th in '98...this place is absolutely gorgeous.
Now for the players. The USGA has a ton of fun with the pairings each year, and it is often fun to look at the groupings and see what they tried to do as far as putting players of similar nationalities, playing styles, etc together. This year was no different. They clearly went for shock value with two of the groups (and probably the worst grouping strategy ever as far as having to hire extra course marshals!) Consider the following two groups:
7:33a.m. Thursday (Hole 1), 1:18p.m. Friday (Hole 9): Phil Mickelson, Tiger Woods, Bubba Watson.
1:29p.m. Thursday (Hole 1), 7:44a.m. Friday (Hole 9): Rory McIlroy, Lee Westwood, Luke Donald.
Wow.
Let's look at a few other groups, because this is always incredibly interesting
Patrick Cantlay (a), Jonathon Byrd, Kyle Stanley (the young American phenom group)
Retief Goosen, Vijay Singh, Zach Johnson (the 'you guys are good but your playing styles are sooooooo boring' group)
Tim Clark, Toru Taniguchi, Rod Pampling (the midget group)
Davis Love III, Padraig Harrington, David Toms (the 'we're clearly past our prime' group)
KJ Choi, YE Yang, KT Kim (the 'LOL the USGA is clearly racist' - slash - lets have fun with initials group)
Gonzalo Fernandez-Castan'o, SangMoon Bae, Rafael Cabrera-Bello (the compound names group, gosh this whole names thing is so much fun!)
Bill Haas, Nick Watney, Brandt Snedeker (the young American budding stars group)
Jason Day, Louis Oosthuizen, Jason Dufner (the steady-as-she-goes group: no fist pumping allowed)
Ernie Els, Geoff Oglivy, Angel Cabrera (the 'we have won exactly 1 US Open each' group)
Stewart Cink, Trevor Immelman, Lucas Glover (the 'we got our 1 major for our career and will clearly never top that' group)
Adam Scott, Keegan Bradley, Webb Simpson (the semi-established young stars group part 1)
Rickie Fowler, Ryo Ishikawa, Dustin Johnson (the semi-established young stars group part 2)
...and I could go on and on. Love this stuff.
Anyway, we saw this show before earlier in the year - Tiger put on a ballstriking clinic at Bay Hill but came to Augusta and lost it. He did the same at Muirfield Village, winning his 73rd tour event in dramatic fashion while absolutely dominating the course (though he struggled putting). We'll see if he can put it together again at the year's toughest test of golf.
Time for the hair-pulling, rough-chunking, putter-slamming fun.
Time for a 670-yard par 5. A 520, 498, and 489 yard par 4s. 15-on-the-stimpmeter concrete greens. 6.5 inch rough in the deep cuts.
The U.S. Open.
Word on the street (and interwebs) is that Mike Davis has done a great job producing a tough, fair test. Barring catastrophic rain softening which put a damper (haha sorry) on last year's Open and let the field run amok at Congressional, this Open should play fairly tough. My semi-informed opinion is that the winning score will be around 3-under, give or take.
Let's get to know the venue: Olympic Club in San Francisco. It has hosted several major events, the last US Open being here in 1998. Since then, an insect infestation has killed almost 500 trees on the property, which, combined with numerous other course changes and technology changes in equipment, will make this event play much, much different than the one 14 years ago.
The last time the U.S. Open was here was in 1998, a tournament won in huge come-from-behind fashion by Lee Janzen over the late Payne Stewart. Shot of the 18th in '98...this place is absolutely gorgeous.
Now for the players. The USGA has a ton of fun with the pairings each year, and it is often fun to look at the groupings and see what they tried to do as far as putting players of similar nationalities, playing styles, etc together. This year was no different. They clearly went for shock value with two of the groups (and probably the worst grouping strategy ever as far as having to hire extra course marshals!) Consider the following two groups:
7:33a.m. Thursday (Hole 1), 1:18p.m. Friday (Hole 9): Phil Mickelson, Tiger Woods, Bubba Watson.
1:29p.m. Thursday (Hole 1), 7:44a.m. Friday (Hole 9): Rory McIlroy, Lee Westwood, Luke Donald.
Wow.
Let's look at a few other groups, because this is always incredibly interesting
Patrick Cantlay (a), Jonathon Byrd, Kyle Stanley (the young American phenom group)
Retief Goosen, Vijay Singh, Zach Johnson (the 'you guys are good but your playing styles are sooooooo boring' group)
Tim Clark, Toru Taniguchi, Rod Pampling (the midget group)
Davis Love III, Padraig Harrington, David Toms (the 'we're clearly past our prime' group)
KJ Choi, YE Yang, KT Kim (the 'LOL the USGA is clearly racist' - slash - lets have fun with initials group)
Gonzalo Fernandez-Castan'o, SangMoon Bae, Rafael Cabrera-Bello (the compound names group, gosh this whole names thing is so much fun!)
Bill Haas, Nick Watney, Brandt Snedeker (the young American budding stars group)
Jason Day, Louis Oosthuizen, Jason Dufner (the steady-as-she-goes group: no fist pumping allowed)
Ernie Els, Geoff Oglivy, Angel Cabrera (the 'we have won exactly 1 US Open each' group)
Stewart Cink, Trevor Immelman, Lucas Glover (the 'we got our 1 major for our career and will clearly never top that' group)
Adam Scott, Keegan Bradley, Webb Simpson (the semi-established young stars group part 1)
Rickie Fowler, Ryo Ishikawa, Dustin Johnson (the semi-established young stars group part 2)
...and I could go on and on. Love this stuff.
Anyway, we saw this show before earlier in the year - Tiger put on a ballstriking clinic at Bay Hill but came to Augusta and lost it. He did the same at Muirfield Village, winning his 73rd tour event in dramatic fashion while absolutely dominating the course (though he struggled putting). We'll see if he can put it together again at the year's toughest test of golf.
