The build-up to this US Open has been all about reconciliation. Rory McIlroy is back with his wife Erica after a month-long split, Scottie Scheffler returned to the winner’s enclosure after a gaping seven-week drought and now the tournament could feature the reinstatementof the US Golf Association’s reputation as the arch merchants of the major co*ck-up.
As the hours count down to the start of the 124th edition of America’s national championship, apprehension filled the humid North Carolina air, as well as a distinct whiff of deja vu.
Two words dominated the whispers among the pros – ‘borderline’ and ‘carnage’. In golf, and with putting greens especially, one invariably leads to the other and, as far as the USGA is concerned, is as inevitable as night following day.
Pinehurst is a US gem, and the resort’s No 2 Course is its Cullinan Diamond, but it is feared that the USGA’s rediscovery of its obsession with par might turn the treasure into a travesty. If there is a farce, it will almost certainly unfold not in the wire-grass from the sandhills that flank the fairways, but on the turtle-back greens with their sad*stic runoffs. There is one area behind the 14th green that Shay Knight, Viktor Hovland’s caddie, has named “f-----ville”.
If those putting surfaces are too quick then it could well turn chaotic, as Tiger Woods said in a thinly veiled warning to the officials. “I’ve been as guilty as the rest of the guys I’ve played with in practice rounds – we’ve putted off a lot of greens,” he said.
“It depends on how severe the USGA wants to make this, how close they want to get us up to those sides. I foresee watching some of the guys play ping pong back and forth. We were only half joking that by the end of the week the greens get so slick that you bend down to read a putt and your putter slips.”
Defending champion Wyndham Clark had warned on Monday: “If they get any firmer and faster, the greens will be borderline.” It has been nothing but blazing sunshine since.
Jon Bodenhamer, the USGA chief of championships, hardly allayed concerns on Wednesday. “Our strategy is built around tough but fair, but these are difficult greens, no bones about it,” he said.
Granted, Pinehurst is always arduous. Only four players have finished under par in the three US Opens staged here and Bodenhamer referenced Mother Nature and being true to the objectives of Donald Ross when he designed this course in 1907.
Yet as Woods pointed out, the Scottish-born geniusnever meant for his upside-down cereal-bowl creations to be like this. “When Donald made the greens this severe, I don’t think he intended them to be running at 13 on the stimpmeter,” Woods said. “When he first made them they were the speed that the fairways are now.”
So do not blame Ross, say the players. It is the USGA who have insisted on the resemblance to marble. Paul Casey’s coach, Peter Kostis, perhaps summed up the prevailing feeling best. “People will complain that the greens on No 2 are unfair or ridiculous,” he said. “When Donald Ross designed them the green speeds were around 6 or 7 on the stimp. It’s the pursuit of ridiculously faster green speeds that creates the problems and the USGA is really good at that.”
Yes, they have history. Before the birth of LIV, the US Open was the professional game’s flashpoint of controversy. From the middle towards the end of the last decade, June would annually witness a week in which the USGA’s unerring ability to cause furious dissension in the locker room – and hilarity in the living room.
Seeing mollycoddled professionals humbled and humiliated was great fun to some of those watching at home. But it could not last.The players had endured enough of being the butt of the joke and mutiny was threatened.
In 2019, a story in American magazine Golf Digest claimed that a number of the top players, including Dustin Johnson and McIlroy, had actually talked of boycotting the major. Mike Davis, the then USGA chief executive, did not deny it. “Certainly, we read that report but we have decided to take the high road,” he said. Well, he liked it up there.
Davis was central to the controversy. Golf tournaments should be about the players, not the blazers, yet for so long he has put himself front, left and centre as a visionary and all too often the spotlight ended up falling upon him as the villain.
In 2015 there was the absurdity of Chambers Bay in Seattle where, in Henrik Stenson’s words, “broccoli” seemed to be growing on the greens. In 2016 at Oakmont, Dustin Johnson was not even sure whether he was playing down the stretch with a two-shot penalty or not. The USGA informed him afterwards that he had been, but fortunately Johnson had a big enough lead to avoid an outrage.
In 2017, Erin Hills with its wide fairways, looked more like a regular event than a major, particularly after bowing to player pressure to chop back the rough, and in 2018 at Shinneco*ck Hills, after faithfully promising they would not make the same errors as 14 years before when they “lost” the greens, they went ahead and made exactly the same errors.
Phil Mickelson was so incensed he chased down a putt that was running away and hit the ball again while it was in motion. It was a stupid protest, but a protest nonetheless.
With Davis stepping down and the criticisms taking the toll, the USGA have largely behaved since. But social media clips here of balls rolling from being seemingly stationary next to holeside to 30 yards down the slope have raised suspicions that there could be another horror show waiting in the cans.
Of course, the USGA could present generous pin positions, turn on the hoses and guard against “losing” the greens – forsaking the reparation of their image. The question is, can they possibly resist acting contrary to their very nature? Let carnage commence.
