The irony of the USGA

[RJ_Daley]

Identify the best player in the world?  It didn't happen at Carnoustie and it didn't happen yesterday at Shinnecock.

Maybe one should turn that thought around and say that Shinnecock did identify/expose who isn't the best player in the world any longer?  

[Dan_Callahan]

It's hard to argue that the course wasn't fair, since it played the same for everyone. However, I'm disappointed that the USGA didn't learn anything from the great Master's finish just a few months ago. Granted, they are very different tournaments, but what a finish at Augusta, part of which was a result of making the course MORE playable on Sunday. I wish the USGA had done the same, so that someone who was playing exceptionally well might have had a chance of posting a low number (which in this case would have meant anything under par!). The Open was a case study in survival, with no opportunity for truly heroic Sunday shotmaking. That takes nothing away from Retief, who played the course, as it was set up, better than anyone else.

[Mike Hendren]

What do you make of Meeks' comment that they likely would have needed to stop play had the wind been up?  Hello?  Doesn't the wind typically blow there?  The USGA dodged a bullet and aren't big enough to admit it.  

Perhaps they should send Meeks et all out on the course with the understanding that they must shoot within 20 strokes of their handicap or else resign from the competition committee.

Again, Goosen played brilliantly and is a most deserving champion.  

Mike

[Tiger_Bernhardt]

I also think the best golfer won. Two players stood up to the test and one of them prevailed. I also find the USGA out of touch. Yes, the best golfer won but at what price. They showed us saturday and sunday when the wind kicked up that nobody was going to score on their watch. The rolling of 7 saturday. The course was out of control hard and fast sunday. The rough seem trampled down in many places. They kept hitting drivers and missing the fairway badly yet continued to do it. I did not see the lies that should have come with the poor drives. I did see greens that were over the top. They also showed us what poor taste is with NBC's Bob Costas not being prepared for his interview and the totally insensitive question to Goosen about playing knowing the crowd was all with Phil. Yes, Phil was the crowd favorite but Goosen has support as well. I have changed my mind. I think the U S Open should say in New York and spare us having to put up with the USGA. I am a Masters and Open man.

[A_Clay_Man]

With all due respect, I disagree with you about the purists and unhappiness with the extreme maintenance melds.  IMHO, the maintenance meld at Shinnecock this week was so extreme that it detracted from the architecture.

A.G.- I appreciate your respect, but it's my thinking that the extreme set-up, showed-off the GCA, more so than, had they been throwing darts.

If it had rained all weekend, and the opposite maintenance extreme had been realized, all of those slopes and twists and unpredictable bounces would've not been seen by anyone.

[Mike Hendren]

Another USGA gem, courtesy of Golfweek:

Walter Driver, chairman of the USGA’s Championship Committee, tried to justify something that just wasn’t justifiable, reasoning that there is a Redan hole around the corner at National Golf Links that’s “far more difficult” than No. 7 at Shinnecock.

That’s great, though last we checked, we’re not staging our national Open over there this week.

“The wind was drying it (the green) out, they were putting downwind, downhill, downgrain, downworld, and it was very difficult to stop those putts,” Driver said. “We were trying to moderate the green and have been trying to moderate the design of the green since Tuesday, but we can’t do anything about the design of the hole.”

.... moderate the design of the green...?  

Those golden age architects - what a bunch of knuckleheads.

You must be joking!
John McEnroe

[Ken Fry]

My analogy thus far in bringing Carnoustie into a discussion with Shinnecock is to draw comparisons on the setup.

Both Open Championships choose venues "worthy" of their competition.  The last I checked, Carnoustie and Shinnecock are hard enough without getting into "goofy" golf.  The USGA pushed the envelope and got burned Saturday night and through Sunday.  But why get the course to that point?  The venues speak for themselves.  May the best player make his way around the course in the least amount of strokes and come out on top.

The Open"s" have turned into the luck of the bounce and the temperature level with the putter.  If Phil's putter was half as hot as Retief's, the media would be extolling his superiority on claiming the first half of the grand slam.  Retief played good enough to win, but I think this whole thought process of the USGA and R&A to "not punish the best players, but to identify them" is absurd.  Yes, all the players played the same golf course so I don't believe anything was unfair, just too unpredicatable to be an honest measure.

And John Vander Borght, my point is Mother Nature controls a drought.  In 1933, there wasn't the techology with the irrigation system nor the advances in agronomy to control how the greens will eventually "stimp out."  The USGA had to water a few greens to slow them down becuase conditions became exactly like they were suppose to?!?

[Rick Shefchik]

Maybe scoring would have been better with the old Balatas that spun more and could be stopped quicker on the firm surfaces.

A very interesting theory. We've been told --- and maybe we've all come to believe through our own experience -- that the new Pro V1-style solid core ball has such a high rate of spin that it's as good as Balata for stopping on firm greens.

But maybe it's not.

With the exception of #7 on Saturday -- where anything not nailed to the green was in danger of sliding into the gallery -- a Balata ball might have allowed the pros to get closer to the hole. The pros have sacrificed spin for distance, and most weeks the payoff more than justifies the decision. This could be one week where it did not.

An observation: Everyone, from the USGA to NBC to the fans, wanted the wind to blow this week. But the USGA set up the course in a manner that would have created a disaster if the wind speed had topped 20 mph. I loved the way the course played, but I don't think the USGA provided a large enough margin of error for the wind that they expected and hoped for.

Of course, if the wind had blown, the higher-spin Balata ball might not have been any more effective, because more drives would have ended up in the rough, and not even a Balata could hold those greens from the rough.

Golf is a very hard game, isn't it?

[Matt_Ward]

For those of you who weren't at the Open and therefore must base your comments from other parties I would like to offere the following after spending the week at America's finest course IMHO.

The first two rounds were well handled by the USGA -- the opportunity to score was present and there was fairness in the manner by which the course treated all the competitors. Unfortunately, someone failed to understand that turning off the spiget only cheapened the event because in a number of instances fair play could not be accomodated -- the 7th and 10th greens at as two glaring examples.

Shinnecock Hills is toooooo pure a site and it doesn't need some helpful but misguided hand to protect par at all costs.

The USGA needs to have a good old-fahsioned internal discussion on just what it is trying to accomplish.

I watched countless groups play the course and their comments for the first 36 holes were uniformly positive. There will always be some clown who cries and whines because they are used to playing Indian Wells and shooting a 59 or better.

The last 36 holes had an unusual set of conditions with a very dry northwest wind that simply accelerated the dry conditions that were present.

The USGA -- David Fay specifically -- said a mistake was made to keep rolling the green at the 7th as late as Saturday but such screw-ups are really indefensible because of what the event is trying to identify. Did anyone learn from the stupidty of the back pin placement at the 18th at Olympic or the fast as pool table fairway at the same course in '87?

Shinnecock Hills was well set up for the event for the intial 36 holes -- the folks taking it over the edge really need to examine just what it is they are seeking to produce because they allowed what could have been a supreme ending to disintegrate by the combo aspects of what weather produced and how they facilitated such situations to go beyond the breaking point.

One last thing -- the final round stroke average was the highest since the '72 final round at Pebble and it was the first time since 1963 that NO PLAYER shot a round under par in the final round. Like I said Shinnecock is the supreme US Open course IMHO and if played as intended the overall character of the event would only shine more than it has from this past weekend's situation.

[A_Clay_Man]

The USGA needs to have a good old-fahsioned internal discussion on just what it is trying to accomplish.

Matt-
Maybe they are smart, like fox?

Perhaps the alleged deception about rolling the 7th green was an attempt to stop the ridiculous green speed race, every course seems headed for.

It's a far better strtegy than having to flatten any masterpiece, as some have opined.

[tlavin]

I think most people fail to recognize that the USGA came within one day of pulling off a phenomenal championship.  Let's review the bidding: On Wednesday, the wind was blowing and the course was very difficult, but playable.  Thursday, the course was softer, the rain came in and set up another relatively mild day (course conditions wise) on Friday.  On Saturday, the setup was very difficult, but fair.  If the championship had ended on Saturday, I don't think that anybody would have cried foul about Shinny or the USGA.  

Their only problem was in failing to recognize the fact that the entire course needed watering on Saturday night.  This is a big miscalculation, I'll readily admit, but it is almost impossible to imagine Tom Meeks and Tim Moraghan (both good men) calling for the sprinklers.  If they had done that, I guess that the bitching and moaning would have been less and you would have had eight or nine guys under par and Phil might have had a chance.

Bottom line is this: they host this championship on razor-thin margins.  The balance between fast and firm vs. unplayable asphalt is incredibly difficult to maintain, but unless they dance with the devil, the US Open will be just another tournament with thirty players under par and the winner in the teens.

I don't think anybody wants that, either.

[Jeff_Lewis]

Terry,

Back to the original concept of this thread. WHY does the USGA have to dance with the devil? Because they let Lola and the equipment manufacturers seduce them into a flawed ball test.

[tlavin]

Terry,

Back to the original concept of this thread. WHY does the USGA have to dance with the devil? Because they let Lola and the equipment manufacturers seduce them into a flawed ball test.

Jeff,

You're preaching to the converted.  The ball is a huge problem.  They ought to make a tour ball. The rest of us love technology for our games, but it is ruining the professional game.

[JohnV]

The USGA were going to the edge long before the ball was an issue, just the technology of agronomics was such that the edge wasn't as far out.  Look at Winged Foot in 1984 for a prime example.

When the Alison Nicholas won the US Women's Open at -10 in 1997 at Pumpkin Ridge, there were all kinds of calls that the USGA wasn't setting the course up tough enough (even though only Nancy Lopez was close to that number.)  

Lets say that the course was setup further from the edge and -12 had one (only 2 shots a round from the winning score) wouldn't some here have suddenly change opinions and said that they made Shinnecock look too wimpy and the distance the ball is going was making a mockery of the great courses.

One week people argue that the ball is bad because scores are too low the next because the scores are too high because they made the course too hard because the ball is bad.

[Tommy_Naccarato]

Terry,
How can you sit and defend this atrocious behavior of the USGA?  If you were the Super at Shinnecock and these, "GENTLEMEN" decided you were going to be the fall guy, wouldn't you be a little ticked-off?

This isn't about running a championship on razor-thing green keeping practices, its about running the Game of Golf in America, which they have failed.

I think the USGA has reached the end of its rope. I think a new organization that wants to govern all the aspects of American golf properly needs to be put in its place. The USGA is a out of control train wreck that has been for the last 15 years, been doing more harm then good.

[George Pazin]

Tommy -

The wonderful thing about our country is that you are free to start your own organization, with its own philosophies, practices, tournaments, etc. Have at it!

[Tommy_Naccarato]

George, Don't laugh, but it has happened before.  CART, now the Indy Racing League all replaced USAC--the once powerful and strong-armed governing body of automobile racing in the United States that I don't even think exists anymore.

[Tommy_Naccarato]

I nominate this for post of the year!

[Patrick_Mucci]

KFry,

So this tournament did exactly what it wa suppose to do:  identify the luckiest player in the world.

Goosen putted out of his mind.  No one can take that away from him, but shots he and other players executed were at the mercy of bounces and rolls.

We must have been watching different telecasts.

How did Goosen's approach from 127 yards that went into the short right greenside bunker at # 8 receive a quirky bounce or roll ?

How did his 9-iron into the short right greenside bunker at
# 14 receive a bad bounce or roll ?

How did Mickelson's shot into # 17 receive a quirky bounce or roll ?

How did player after player who chilli dipped recovery shots receive bad bounces and rolls ?

How did players hitting floating wedges short of the green receive bad bounces and rolls ?

In addition, Goosen had anything but a perfect lie and angle for his recovery into # 13.  Even the announcers declared that his ONLY play was back to the fairway in three, chip/pitch to the green in four, and one or two putt for five or six.  He made a BRILLIANT shot, which the announcers admitted they called wrong, and he made a brilliant putt to save par.   Did he receive a quirky bounce on his tee shot ?
Did he receive a quirky bounce on his second or third shot ?[/color]

Is there anything wrong with that?  No, but luck of the bounce doesn't identify the best player in the field.

You're mistaking bad shots and bad decisions for unlucky bounces and rolls[/color]

The USGA took a page from the R&A's set-up of Carnoustie a few years ago.

That's pure nonsense, there's no comparison to the two course set-ups.

If Phil Mickelson won this tournament, course set-up and the USGA wouldn't be in the news today[/color]

Mike Hendren,

The correct quote is: You can't be serious !

Jeff Lewis,

I think most on this site agree that a competition ball is necessary, the question remains if the USGA sees it, and is willing to act on it.