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...
OAKMONT, PA – They’re called “half-par holes” be cause they play either much easier or much harder than the par on the scorecard states, and they are often the key to winning a golf tournament. Be it stroke play or match play, the ability to negotiate the razor thin edge between a birdie (or even eagle) or a triple bogey is the difference...
—Friends to Jay: “Who’s going to win the U.S. Open this year?” Jay to Friends: “Oakmont, that’s who.”— Of all the major championship venues I’ve seen in my career as a sports writer – and I’ve see everything from Augusta to Pebble and back – Oakmont is my favorite. Cresting the hill of the second...
HAVEN, WI – With a tip of the hat and a golf clap to Una Jones of the PGA of America, here’s everything you need to know about the magic number – 63, now accomplished 27 times. HIROSHI IWATA JOINS CLUB 63 With a 9-under-par 63 in the second round, Japan’s Hiroshi Iwata tied the all-time 18-hole scoring mark in a major championship...
Jay’s Plays on the Golf News Net Radio Network, U.S. Open Recap and Tournament Coverage! Tom Rinaldi of ESPN – Tom Terrific talks turkey about Chambers Bay and the Open leaderboard. Cybergolf’s Jeff Shelley – Jeff talks First Green and its wild success with the USGA. Dave Christiansen of Gamble Sands GC in Brewerton, WA – a fantastic...
[Editor’s Note: Bringing back an old favorite column, Jay writes this U.S. Open wrap-up in the form of a Father’s day letter to his 91-year old Dad.] SNOQUALMIE, WA – Dear Dad: For the 11th year in a row, because of the U.S. Open I’ll miss seeing you for Father’s Day. I’m really sorry for that, and I wish it were different. The...
UNIVERSITY PLACE – “It’s too brown! It’s too bumpy! It’s too British!” they moan plaintively. Yes, the whiny blockheads are out in force this year, as they usually are at the U.S. Open, complaining about how unusual golf’s annual Final Examination is. It’s actually flabbergasting: They’re not complaining about how...
UNIVERSITY PLACE, WA – Chambers Bay Co-architect Bruce Charlton smiles and claps his hands as a stat appears on the TV broadcast of the U.S. Open listing the brutish, uphill, 508-yard, par-4 seventh hole as the hardest hole on the golf course thus far in the tournament, a 4.43 stroke average as we go to press. “We wanted there to be swing holes. We wanted...
UNIVERSITY PLACE, WA – I have to weep for our society because we have lost it as a species when we can’t all instantly fall in love with Chambers Bay, the site of the 2015 U.S. Open, hard by Puget Sound’s rugged waters, where forest-fragrant air gently caresses verdant, dew-dripped tree-covered hills. “Idyllic” is the first word that...