ERIN, WI – Hey! Ron Whitten, Dana Fry, and Mike Hurdzan built this great golf course in Wisconsin. Let’s go and hack at it! That’s not my loudmouth, lunkhead golf buddies and I talking, it’s the brightest stars of the professional tours. A remarkably benign Erin Hills surrendered record numbers of birdies to every Tom, Dick, and Harry (or in...
ERIN, WI – With a precision that Bernhard Langer would have envied, Rickie Fowler seized the first round lead of the 117th U.S. Open with a dazzling 7-under 65. It was the lowest score-to-par in the first round of the National Open since Jack Nicklaus and Tom Weiskopf fired 8-under 63s at Baltusrol in 1980. Fowler’s card was sparkling clean – seven...
ERIN, WI – The collection of one shot holes at Erin Hills is as strong as we’ve ever seen at any U.S. Open. Both nine and 16 are downright iconic: instant classics. Both holes also prove that length is overrated. The ninth green is completely encircled by bunkers, including several narrow trenches just wide enough to stand, but, in places, to narrow to...
ERIN, WI – A blood red sunset bathed Erin Hills Golf Course in an eerie witch-light as the sun descended behind an ominous curtain of black clouds. One last feeble flicker of the dying rays extinguished dismally, and then the landscape plunged into darkness, illuminated only by angry streaks of lightning, each strike silhouetting the clubhouse against the...
Gary D’Amato of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and the author of the definitive book on Erin Hills joined us on the Jay’s Plays Radio Show to finish up our U.S. Open preview for the Golf News Net. We talked the Erin Hills, broke down the chances for a number of players. We even got Tiger Woods in there too…for the last time this week, that’s...
GNN has just posted my Erin Hills preview for the 2017 U.S. Open.
We are at our desk working an hour earlier than our ETA. The rain has stopped and the players are headed out for practice rounds.
We’ll also post the Gary D’Amato interview we did as the second half of our Jay’s Plays Radio Show preview.
Happy U.S. Open week everybody.
2018: Shinnecock Hills Golf Club, Southampton, N.Y. 2019: Pebble Beach Golf Links, Carmel, CA 2020: Winged Foot Golf Club (West Course), Mamaroneck, N.Y. 2021: Torrey Pines Golf Course (South Course), San Diego, Calif. 2022: The Country Club, Brookline, Mass. 2023: Los Angeles (Calif.) Country Club (North Course) 2024: Pinehurst Resort & Country Club, Village of...
It’s U.S. Open preview time. We’ll have our article posted at Golf News Net soon, but in the meantime, here’s part 1 of my Jay’s Plays Radio Show preview. This is one heck of a show people. Our first guest was the one and only Peter Kessler, veteran of thousands of radio and TV shows, including Golf Channel. We talked Tiger and Erin Hills...
ERIN, WI – Dana Fry, who along with Mike Hurdzan and lawyer-turned-writer-turned-golf architect Ron Whitten, designed 11-year old Erin Hills, site of the 117th U.S. Open, recently said in an interview that, “it’s unprecedented for the USGA to host the tournament at a venue this new.” He’s close to being correct. It’s actually only...
The USGA has released its list of 2017 U.S. Open Sectional qualifying sites. The list is headlined by a foreign course this year – Walton Heath, the great English heathland course designed by Herbert Fowler.Other highlights include Canoe Brook, Woodmont, (of Barack Obama fame), and Jupiter Hills. Woodmont, by the way, is making its 30th consecutive appearance...
OAKMONT, PA – All week long this was a U.S. Open that begged to be forgotten. From a Thursday washout that declawed the golf course and left everyone wrong-footed and playing catch-up to the rules flap that luckily didn’t turn the tournament into a morality play, this 2016 U.S. Open wasn’t Oakmont or the USGA’s finest hour. Swirling in the...
PITTSBURGH, PA – —The noise afterwards, It rises up like a storm, As if you were the Thunder God himself. Proximo to Maximus the Gladiator— Like a scene from Gladiator, the roar of adulation rang from Erie to Allentown and from Scranton to Akron. No mere coliseum could match it. Conquering heroes were returning home, and this is Pittsburgh. When you...
OAKMONT, PA – “It’s the hardest golf course I’ve ever played,” said pretty much every golfer in the field this week at the 2016 U.S. Open. Sergio Garcia, Dustin Johnson, Andrew Sullivan, Phil Mickelson: the list was endless. Mighty Oakmont, Henry Fownes’s knuckle-dragging, slavering-jawed, razor-sharp taloned grassy guillotine is...
With today’s announcement that Oakmont and Shinnecock Hills will host the 2025 and 2026 U.S. Opens respectively, that fills up all spots available for the next ten years. Here is a list of all future U.S. Open venues through 2026. 2017 – Erin Hills Golf Club, Erin, WI 2018 – Shinnecock Hills Country Club, Southampton, NY 2019 – Pebble Beach...
OAKMONT, PA – We’ve had our ledes written for 17 years, but still haven’t been able to use them. “Phinally Phil!” “Phillin’ Groovy!” “Mickel-slam!” – they all lay useless in a seldom used Microsoft Word file I call “The Well of Lost Plots,” where bits of articles that end up on the cutting...