[Author’s Note: This article is from last year’s Open coverage, but traces the history of Opens at Pebble from 1972, its first. Enjoy!] DEL MONTE FOREST, CA – Take a moment to deeply savor the fragrant breeze off the Pacific Ocean. Close your eyes and listen to the gentle rustle of the waves, its somnambulant trance broken only by the mournful...
For today’s U.S. Opern re-write, we celebrate unheralded, but definitely worthy winner Ed Furgol, the club pro who shocked the world winning the U.S. Open at Baltusrol in 1954. And he did it with a withered left arm. It happens once every dozen years or so, someone wins the Opn out of nowhere. Before there was Michael Campbell or Orville Moody or even Jack...
MAMARONECK, NY – We were all writing our leads in the media center, and then Winged Foot went from phestival to phuneral in phorty minutes.. Everyone in Mamaroneck – from the media, to the members on the terrace to the massive galleries around the golf course – everyone thought the 2006 U.S. Open was over, the last few holes just a phormality for Phil Mickelson...
Something a little different. As part of my prep for the U.S. Open, I got the rare and wonderful chance to play Winged Foot under tournament conditions. It was all I could handle an then some. Thank you Golf Course Trades for running the piece. Have fun everyone. From the article: “When it comes to playing the West in a tournament of any kind, Christmas can...
Through coordinated announcements, the R&A, PGA of America, and USGA have released the dates for the golf major championships impacted by the Coronavirus. August 6-12 – PGA Championship, Harding Park, San Francisco September 17-20 – U.S. Open, Winged Foot, Mamaroneck, NY September 25-27 – Ryder Cup, Whistling Straits, Kohler, WI November 12-15...
It’s been a great few weeks for Golden Age golf architecture on the PGA Tour. With all the world enjoying Pebble Beach, Riviera and the other crown jewels that the West Coast has to offer, it’s a good time to take a closer look at some of the best tournament venues we’ll see this year from not only the PGA Tour, but from the USGA and PGA of America as well. There are...
PEBBLE BEACH, CA – For the first time in five years, USGA avoided a rules controversy, a set-up imbroglio, a weather issue, or a turfgrass meltdown. Thank goodness, because the squabbling about the last four years by plarers and press has been more then just strident. It almost appears they are on a mission, with the players demanding a kindler gentler U.S. Open, and...
PEBBLE BEACH, CA – It took someone as big and strong as Brooks Koepka to knock that chip off Koepka’s shoulder, but that’s exactly what Gary Woodland did at Pebble Beach to win the 119th U.S. Open. Woodland won by three strokes over Koepka and by six over Xander Schauffele, 2013 U.S. Open champion Justin Rose, Chez Reavie, and Spain’s John Rahm. His bold, burly...
PEBBLE BEACH, CA – I could have sworn that Marine Layer was the name of a girl I met in Sister Frances’s eighth grade English class, but she’s not. She’s the misty, somber, cold, clammy, grey shroud that blankets northern California just as summer is about to begin, “June gloom” it’s called. Marine Layer descended upon the 119th U.S. Open at Pebble Beach Tuesday...
PEBBLE BEACH, CA – No matter how many haymakers he threw down the stretch Friday, Gary Woodland will not sleep well tonight. He may lead this 119th U.S. Open by two strokes. But Pebble Beach’s other name – the one they don’t put on merchandise in the prop shop – is Ol’ Double Bogey-by-the-sea, and at any moment a golfer’s ship crash upon the rocks of Monterey...
PEBBLE BEACH, CA – For the fourth consecutive day, June gloom hangs oppressively in the sky, so it’s no wonder golfers that prefer U.K. weather are doing so well on the leader board at the 119th U.S. Open at Pebble Beach. Hopefully, blue skies and golden sunshine will return just in time for you, dear reader, to hit the links yourself, before heading to the...
PEBBLE BEACH, CA – Louis Oosthuizen found the poem, the song, the fragrance that is Pebble Beach Golf Links so irresistible, he had to stop and take some pictures. “I was out there, probably looked like a tourist taking all the pictures on my phone and forgot I was playing a practice round. But, yeah, that’s what this place does to you,” he explained candidly...
PEBBLE BEACH, CA – With all the pomp and circumstance of the U.S. Open’s long and storied history at Pebble Beach, as well as the course’s glorious 100th anniversary, it’s easy to forget that the PGA Championship also was contested by the shores of Carmel Bay, and that it gave us as zany, wild, and dramatic a major as it has at many of its U.S. Opens. First came the...
PEBBLE BEACH, CA – Two-time defending U.S. Open champion Brooks Koepka was his typical direct and terse self when asked if he’d bothered to learn anything about Willie Anderson, the golfer whose historic “three-peat” feat Koepka trying to equal. “No,” he said. He hadn’t even thought to Google him. You can bet the farm, however, that Tiger Woods knows exactly who...
PEBBLE BEACH, CA – It’s called June Gloom, that cold, grey mist that descends upon Monterey Peninsula that turns the otherwise green and golden Pebble Beach into a scene out of Hound of the Baskervilles. Under this chilly blanket of clouds, it’s easier to understand how our beloved Pebble, perhaps the shortest of America’s informal rotation of national championship...