Frank Hannigan on the USGA Shinny setup
Thoughts on what happened at Shinnecock
June 20, 2004
I don't know the answer, but I can certainly pose the question: Is it worthwhile doing to Shinnecock Hills what was done last week in order to achieve high scores in a US Open?
The dominating fact of the set-up was no water. This made for an over-the-top brick-hard course with pinched-in fairways, much too narrow at 25 yards, linked to greens that were the firmest in a U.S. Open since the USGA's Sandy Tatum blessed a set-up at Winged Foot in l974 resulting in a winning score of 7-over by Hale Irwin. At Winged Foot, though, it was possible to drive the ball into the fairways.
On the other hand, it's wonderful to see them suffer, isn't it? Admit it. They are wealthy young people, only a handful of whom have ever earned a dime in their lives other than from the hitting of golf balls. I keep waiting for a television graphic reading: "Last Time Phil Mickelson Flew Commercial - 1996."
You kept hearing how intrinsically hard Shinnecock Hills is and how it plays just that way for the members. Absurd. It doesn't play that way on a daily basis at all. If it did, the members would hop a fence and sneak on the adjacent National Golf Links of America. With good luck in the weather - a lot of rain in the weeks leading up to the Open followed by a dry spell - the difficulty of Shinnecock Hills could be replicated at hundreds of courses.
It's very hard to figure out the USGA. In fact, it's nigh impossible. They say it was contrary to orders to roll the 7th green before the third round. I can't imagine how one mistakenly rolls a green. It's not as if a worker mistakenly puts a Snap-On tool in his pocket, gets to the 7th green, and says "I think I'll roll this thing."
Besides, there's no evidence that says a mistaken roll of the green makes for the difference between sanity and unplayability. The 7th green and many others should have been watered DURING play. Greens have been syringed during rounds at U.S. Opens from time immemorial. Why wait until the early players on Sunday morning started putting into bunkers?
There's no way of knowing other than to note that there's a lot of conflict inside the USGA. Some people want one thing; others want something else; and - off the record, of course - they do a lot of sniping at each other. Then they go on camera and say everything is just fine.
By and large, the USGA gets away with murder by not saying anything. I attended its annual press conference on Wednesday morning. The questions could hardly be softer except that one reporter, echoing a recent story in the magazine Business Week, asked USGA president Fred Ridley how he could justify his membership in the all-male Augusta National Golf Club. Ridley got away with an answer to the effect that he had already said all he had to say on that subject without saying what it was he had said.
There was a Jim Carey movie not long ago in which the central figure was infected with a condition that caused him to speak with candor no matter what. Ridley, similarly affected, might have replied that, for a youngish Florida real estate lawyer, a membership at Augusta National is not far removed from having a license to print money.
You knew that NBC would have to deal with the controversy of the course set-up. So what they did was what they are so good at: They indulge in a form of fake journalism in which it sounds as if hard questions were being asked, except they aren't hard. At the Olympics in Athens it will be laid on with a shovel. The bottom line is: do not get the USGA or the International Olympic Committee mad at you, lest you endanger the right to broadcast the events.
That being said, the images turned out by producer Tommy Roy and his people were superb. As for the voices, the reaction depends on whether or not you like the style and tone of Johnny Miller, who dominates NBC golf totally.
The last time we saw "pitch-out" rough at a championship was for the British Open at Carnoustie in 1999 when the R&A made a mistake so horrendous that it may have forever stained the reputation of a truly great course.
NBC's main man Bob Costas was brought in from the outside world to support the premise that the U.S. Open is so special that it deserves Bob Costas. He contributed a hilarious segment during the father and son interview of Jay and Bill Haas on Sunday. Poor Costas, having been slipped a piece of bad information, said to Jay that the father's day angle was even more memorable because former Masters winner Bob Goalby was HIS father-in-law. Nope. Goalby is an uncle of Jay Haas. Jay Haas is so cool and in charge that he did not correct Costas, who better not make that kind of mistake with Tiger Woods.
The air completely went out of the telecast when Mickelson made a double bogey on the 7lst hole. That's the most I have heard announcers pulling for a player since Ben Crenshaw was on the way to winning a Masters and CBS' Pat Summerall sobbed from happiness (along with all the rest of us who knew Crenshaw.) Mickelson is so much a better story and interview than Retief Goosen, a very nice man who has chosen not to invent a television personality.
Next year the Open goes back to Pinehurst No. 2 in North Carolina. A reporter from Greensboro told me at Shinnecock that new tees had been installed so that Pinehurst can play at 7,400 yards with a par of 70. Nice.