The awful weather of this never-ending winter continued all across New England, the Mid-Atlantic, and into the Rust Belt and Heartland, crippling travel and causing multiple delays to the start of golf season. Even Shinnecock Hills, site of this year’s U.S. Open, has been affected. Erring on the side of caution (of course) the Club will Open one week later than...
Imagine my surprise when I saw something called “Hombre Golf Club, the Bad and Ugly Courses” listed among the nearly 100 local qualifying sites for the 118th U.S. Open. What passes for names these days! First we had the Mighty Ducks in hockey, now we have the Good the Bad and the Ugly in golf? What’s next? Is the Outlaw Josie Wales gonna pop out from behind a...
TOWN OF ERIN, WI – No less a personage than nine-time major champion Gary Player himself said that, “the long bunker shot is the most difficult shot in golf.” How fitting it is then, that the 2017 U.S. Open was essentially sealed by Brooks Koepka with one of the most exquisite played in the recent annals of the tournament. Clinging to a one shot lead over plucky...
TOWN OF ERIN, WI – Dear Dad: Happy Father’s Day! Another year, another U.S. Open, (13 now, in a row, and 25 majors overall), another year I get to write a letter to you in the form of an article, and you get to tell me what I should have done all week while I was here. Oh well, it beats Mom feeding you that slop at the nursing home they call food, don’t it? I still...
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 this case, every Brooks...
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 birdies no bogeys...
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 take anything...
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 surrounding...
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...
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 second “new,” modern-era course...
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...
SPRINGFIELD, NJ – —“I didn’t win despite my handicap, but because of it – just as Hogan came back from that automobile accident, and Babe Zaharias came back from a cancer operation. — Ed Furgol after winning The 1954 U.S. Open at Baltusrol At precisely 9 o’clock the sun went down with a last vermillion flash behind old Baltus Mountain, and a wave of...
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 play...
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 the hardest major championship venue...