"But every week it starts to get boring. It lacks imagination.”

Doug Ferguson looks at the results of the PGA Tour's increasingly difficult course setup approach that made it a lot easier for me to TiVo the Women's Open instead of Firestone.

But as Steve Stricker noted last week, “It seems like every week we’re getting one of these.”

“The golf courses are so much harder,” Woods said. “Stevie (Williams) and I were talking about this. Have we played a tournament yet where you had to go low? With our schedule of tournaments I’ve played in, that hasn’t been the case at all.”

Fast forward...

One indicator that has surprised everyone from players to rules officials is birdies per round. The PGA Tour leader in that category has averaged at least 4.4 birdies per round every year since 1999. Going into the PGA Championship, the leader is Jonathan Byrd at 3.85.

If the trend continues – and it doesn’t figure to get easier the next month – it would be the first time since 1990 that no one on the PGA Tour averaged more than four birdies per round.

Woods, who has never finished lower than fifth in that category, is currently at No. 39.

“It just gets to the point where every course is a long, long golf course with deep, deep rough,” Davis Love III said. “It gets a little stressful. You can’t get away with very much, and you have to be right on perfect. You miss a fairway, you’re hard-pressed to get it back on the green. They keep lengthening courses that are already long. It’s just tough.”

I think Davis should take this up with the Tour Policy Board!

Adam Scott was asked how many majors it feels as though he has played this year. He used his fingers to start ticking them off, and he wound up using both hands.

“Probably seven,” he said, and this was before he went out for his first practice round at Southern Hills.

He mentioned the three majors that already have taken place. There was the Wachovia Championship and The Players Championship in consecutive weeks. The International, which produced birdies and eagles galore, was replaced by the AT&T National at Congressional.

And don’t forget Firestone, which several players figured was suitable for a U.S. Open without any gimmicks from the USGA.

“You’ve got to play for par these days,” Scott said. “You used to have that one or two times a year, and that was a challenge. But every week it starts to get boring. It lacks imagination.”

But Adamn, it makes bad golfers feel good about their games to watch you struggle. It's all about ME!

PGA Tour rules official Slugger White says nothing was changed, and he was surprised to hear the average birdies for round was significantly down from last year.

“We don’t think about birdies and bogeys,” White said. “We’re trying to give them the fairest and the best test. Our general philosophy is difficult and fair every day. There’s not one ounce of difference in our philosophy this year at all.”

And...

“It’s gotten that way a little more as time goes on,” Mark Calcavecchia said. “It seems like years ago, it was just kind of easy. The rough was never this deep week in and week out. I think the pin placements have gotten tougher over the years. Obviously, we’re playing courses longer than we ever have. They’re trying to combat technology a little bit with course conditions and course setups.

“But that’s kind of a good thing,” he added, “to know you don’t have to go out and shoot really low.”

Oh sure, and boy don't the ratings support it as a sound vision for the future.

Woods also is a fan of the tougher conditions. He often says he doesn’t like tournaments won at 25 under par, where making a par means losing strokes to the field.

But is such a steady diet of pars good for the entertainment value of professional golf?

“I think it’s great,” Woods said. “You’ve got to be smart. The golf ball doesn’t go as crooked as it used to, so you’ve got to do something overall – making pins closer to the edges, the rough is certainly higher. You’ve got to do it, or guys will go low. If you give them a golf course that’s pretty easy, they’re going to tear it apart.”

Thanks Tiger. You're a big help.

Huggan Scoop: Crenshaw Regrets Brookline 17th Green Antics!

...and next week, John Huggan learns from Roberto De Vicenzo that regrets signing an incorrect card at the 1968 Masters!

Sheesh, now I know why Ben has avoided the Senior Open Championship!

Seriously, once we cleared up the earth shattering revelations from three Ryder Cup's ago, Huggan got Crenshaw to say some interesting things about the state of the game, technology, the PGA Tour and Augusta.

"What mystifies Bill and myself is seeing courses being built that hardly anyone can play properly," he observes. "We want our courses to be enjoyable for as many people as possible. We would not know how to set up a course for a high-end tournament. That would just mystify me. If you do that, how can you reach anyone else?

"In America the set-ups are becoming unbelievable. They are trying to stay ahead of technology, and sometimes that doesn't produce enjoyable golf. The danger is that the PGA Tour can become stylised a little bit. They are just so difficult week to week.

"The road we are on is a dangerous one. It's one thing to build five different tee boxes, but somewhere along the line you lose the feel of the hole, and what makes it interesting. You compromise the hole. If you don't go straight back and start changing angles, things get a bit off.

"We are trying - and failing - to come up with interesting ways to combat how far the ball goes. You put obstacles out there at certain distances, and players just fly them. I don't know what you do. We try to make doable holes. I like players to shoot really good scores. That's fine with me."

How Crenshaw would definitely not go about tackling the technology issue is by the mindless growing of long grass, which is how the green jackets at Augusta National have chosen to 'protect' their course.

"I heard this a long time ago, although I'm not sure who said it first: 'Interest supersedes length.' If a course is not interesting and you don't bring people back, what is the point? I look at the way Augusta was set up this year, and everyone was forced to play more defensive golf, no question about it. There's now a limit to what the top players will try there.

"To an extent, I can understand what is being done. I'm not saying all of it should be thrown away. There is no question the course needed to be lengthened. But I've never really agreed with the growing of the rough. That is so entirely different from the way it used to play.

"To get players to try shots they maybe shouldn't try was what used to set Augusta apart. Now it's different. A lot of the places I used to aim for off the tee are now in the rough. Those spots used to open up angles to the pins. But now the course is more prescribed. All the shots are decided for us.

"That's not what [Bobby] Jones and [Alister] Mackenzie intended. They wanted it to be reminiscent of St Andrews. To open up those angles, you had choices to make. And to have choices, you need width. There's no choice when the fairway is narrow. I can't believe some of the set-ups on the PGA Tour. Everything is so narrow."

Still, one thing too much rough and longer holes cannot affect is the famed Crenshaw putting stroke. Into his 50s, he has retained the silky touch that carried him to those two Masters titles - most of it anyway. Only last month he was runner-up at the US Senior Open.

"I don't putt quite as well as I used to. I have days where I feel just a little tentative. At my age I sometimes lack the authority you need to putt well. I hit a lot of nice putts that have about a foot less speed on them. That often makes the difference between making and missing."
 

"Why is it that tournament organizers insist on reducing every player to the same hack-out when they miss a fairway? I don't get it. I bet the spectators are bored watching everyone do the same thing."

I know it was like, soooo last week, but remember this is my personal clipping archive and I had to grab these comments from Golf World writer John Huggan's Senior Open Championship game story:

Actually, Watson isn't quite right there. On a Muirfield all but covered in long grass -- "It is worse than Carnoustie in 1999," he had said earlier in the week -- there were plenty of other nasty spots he could have found on that 18th hole. The level and extent of the rough, in fact, had come in for almost unanimous criticism over the four days of an event that will shift to Royal Troon next year under new sponsorship, MasterCard replacing Aberdeen Asset Management.

"It's serious -- six inches of rough under two foot of hay fescue," shuddered senior debutant Nick Faldo before shooting an eight-over-par 292 that left him eight shots adrift of Watson in a tie for 14th place. "Very severe and very narrow."

Others were less circumspect in their opinion of a course set up that some felt was more difficult than that at Carnoustie one week previously. Former Open champion Sandy Lyle, a spectator at Muirfield, was just one calling the length of the rough "ridiculous."

"It misses the point of links golf, which is to create a variety of shots and allow players to hit recovery shots if they are good enough," said the 1985 Open champion, who turns 50 next February. "Why is it that tournament organizers insist on reducing every player to the same hack-out when they miss a fairway? I don't get it. I bet the spectators are bored watching everyone do the same thing."

If there was any doubt the people running the game have no golfing souls, this should do it:

Lyle wasn't alone, either. Many players shared his bemusement at the level of point-missing achieved by tournament organizers who had ignored a request from the Muirfield greenstaff to cut the rough as much as two months before the event. "There was no decision to make," insisted championship committee chairman, and Muirfield member, Alistair Low. "The wet summer produced the rough we have this week, and the course would be this way whether we had a tournament on or not."

But, of course, they did have an event to run, one that sadly lost some of its luster for most of the field.

"I think if you go [in]to the rough, you are dead," said a prescient Eduardo Romero of Argentina, who finished T-4 despite hacking his way to a double bogey at the 71st hole. "Just play sand wedge and lob wedge and put the ball in the fairway and try to make bogey, that's all. It is more severe than Carnoustie because it is so wet and very thick."

"Hay-like rough, like that at Muirfield this week, is 'pointless and boring,' by the way."

John Huggan writes about the worst caddy nightmare of them all: rain, and lots of it. All during his two day stint looping for Mike Clayton at the Senior Open Championship:

The low moment actually came a couple of holes later. By that time the rain had gone from merely torrential to monsoon-like and my man had vindictively decided to hit his tee-shot at the short fourth into the bunker on the left side of the green. After he had splashed out to four feet or so, I had to rake the sand. Standing there, everything already soaked and with 14 holes still to play, it was hard to think back to the time when this caddying thing seemed like a good idea.

He also writes about Clayton's playing companions and this exchange:

Over the course of the two days, Russell and Clayton must have covered most aspects of golf course architecture and course set-up. Hay-like rough, like that at Muirfield this week, is "pointless and boring," by the way.

Meanwhile Clayton had plenty of positive things to say about Muirfield even though on television it looked terribly confining and excessively defined:

In an age when architects like Bill Coore and his partner, Ben Crenshaw, Tom Doak and Gil Hanse are building some of the most beautiful bunkers since the nineteen twenties and thirties, Muirfield has some of the least impressive looking bunkers of any great golf course. Some like the bunker short and left of the 10th green would not be out of place on the most basic of public courses yet every single bunker is perfectly placed to influence both shots and decisions.

The greens are one of the best sets to be found and they are brilliantly tied into the surrounding ground and without being overly severe they demand that you putt from the right side of the hole and approach from the correct side of the fairway.

The holes are routed unusually with the opening nine going clockwise all the way around the outside of the inward nine but unlike Troon it's difficult to determine which half is the more difficult which is a comment on how well the course is balanced so that it favours no particular type of player.

Length is of no great advantage, rather placement and the ability to make the right decision are rewarded at Muirfield and whilst it may not appear so special at first glance it is one of the purest golf courses one can find and its promise is that it will ask fascinating but different questions every day and one never grows tired of the rare and special courses that do that for us.

"If I’m sitting in the stands I don’t want to see bogeys, double bogeys and quadruple bogeys, I want to see birdies.”

Rodger Baillie quotes an unhappy Gary Player about the setup at Muirfield:

Outspoken Gary Player had some sharp words for the Royal & Ancient yesterday, accusing them of making the Seniors Open at Muirfield tougher than the course Padraig Harrington and Co had to take on at Carnoustie in the main Open Championship last weekend.

The South African, back at Muirfield 48 years after his first Open triumph in 1959, said: “It’s surprised me they’ve made the seniors so much more difficult than the regular British Open. The rough must be five or six times higher. The standard of play is extremely high yet it’s projecting that the players are not all that good. We’re trying to build up the European senior tour and the wrong message has been sent out. If I’m sitting in the stands I don’t want to see bogeys, double bogeys and quadruple bogeys, I want to see birdies.”

"Rough misses the point of golf."

Geoff Ogilvy pens a Scotland On Sunday guest column about rough.

Rough is golf's most boring hazard and too much of it on any course can only lead to less interesting play. Rough misses the point of golf.

Fast forward...

It's commonsense really. Golf has to be more interesting if we can stand on tees and decide for ourselves what club to hit and where to hit it.

Take the fourth hole here at Carnoustie. In the first round last Thursday, the pin was tucked away behind the bunker on the left side of the green. So the ideal spot for the drive was actually ten yards or so into the rough on the right. Which was where I chose to hit. I was prepared to accept a less-good lie in order to create a better angle for myself. In the end, I pushed my drive a bit and ended up on the 15th fairway, which gave me an even better line in. But the fun part of the whole process was the standing on the tee and working it out.

Don't get me wrong though. I'm not anti-rough necessarily. Rough like we have here this week gives the talented player a chance to recover.

Which is great and as it should be. The recovery shot might be the most exciting thing to watch at this level. But it disappears completely when the set up is overly penal. When that is the case, there is no point in being good at recovery shots; you'll never get to try one.

And... 

Look also at the 69 Tiger Woods shot in the third round of the US Open at what was almost a rough-covered Oakmont last month. We had the best golfer in the world - one of the two best ever - playing close to his best and he could manage only one under par? All that proves is that there is something wrong with the course.

Happily, none of the above has been the case here at Carnoustie, even if I did miss the cut. Take a close look at the way this great links has been set up this week.

This is the way your own course should be presented for the club championship. The rough is an annoyance but not the end of the world.

You have to hit two good shots on any hole to make a birdie. The greens are running at a speed where you can put the pin in almost any spot on almost every green. It has been a fascinating test.

"What they see on television is what they want."

Vartan Kupelian looks at the extreme setups of recent major championship courses, and becomes yet another writer to openly draw the conclusion that par is being protected for no good reason. Actually, Kupelian is one of the rare ones who takes it a step further and sees a negative impact on the everyday game:

Why? Why not leave the great courses alone? Why turn them into bumper-car rides with crashes at every turn?

It's done to protect par in the face of the onslaught of the world's best golfers, armed with equipment technology and an evolution of their own abilities.

But in defending par, a dangerous precedent is being set. Daunting course setups with undulating greens rolling at breakneck speeds, ankle-deep rough and narrowing fairways are beginning to change the game at the recreational level.

It's a contradiction for organizations like the United States Golf Association, the Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews, and course operators world-wide who are fighting the battle of flat participation numbers. That makes retention a key factor and it's hard to keep golfers when the game is less fun, more expensive and takes more time.

What the severe setup of courses on the major championship rotation -- Shinnecock, Winged Foot, Oakmont, Carnoustie and even Augusta National, where the opening rounds this year resembled a U.S. Open, not the Masters -- have resulted in is a skewed view of what a golf course needs to be.

Too many recreational golfers don't bother to discern between the lethal major championship set-ups and what they play. What they see on television is what they want. It's no different than seeing the pristine emerald at Augusta National on television and transferring those images to the home courses. It's impractical, of course, but it happens every year.

It's a common refrain among course operators that their golfers too often don't play the proper tee, that they choose markers too intense for their ability. By today's standards, golf courses that don't stretch to 7,400 yards are viewed as deficient. It's an unwarranted view but increasingly prevalent in course design.

"Part of the strategy on any links is avoiding the bunkers. But we couldn't see too many of them because of the rough!"

John Huggan reminds us that Carnoustie is a great golf course, we just couldn't see it under all that rough in 1999. He reviews the event in his Sunday column.

First, this memory from Geoff Ogilvy:

"Then I got up there. It was such a disappointment. Breaking 80 was an unbelievable effort. If there is one course on the rota that doesn't need to be touched at all, it is Carnoustie. And they got lucky. It didn't even blow to any great extent. It was the greenness of the rough that was embarrassing. It looked so cultivated and unnatural. It was bizarre."

That it was, the strangeness of the whole situation summed up by the sight of Greg Norman, one of the game's most powerful players, missing the 17th fairway by a foot with his tee-shot, then swinging as hard as he could in a vain effort to move the ball from a lie best described as subterranean. The whole thing was getting silly enough to cause the then 20-year-old Sergio Garcia to burst into tears after an opening round of 89. Less than one month later, it should be noted, the young Spaniard was good enough to finish second in the USPGA Championship.

"If you missed the fairway - any fairway - by even a yard, you were hacking out," remembers Australian Peter O'Malley, one of golf's straightest hitters and the man who hit the opening tee-shot on day one. "We were just lucky the weather wasn't too bad. If it had been really windy no one would have broken 300.

"The set up was really weird. Part of the strategy on any links is avoiding the bunkers. But we couldn't see too many of them because of the rough!"

And on John Philp's contribution to the game...

Most, if not all, of the blame for the craziness was heaped on the head of one John Philp, the head greenkeeper. And it must be said he deserved nearly all of the criticism that rained down on his misguided head. Indeed, the much-maligned Philp did not help himself with a series of public comments seemingly designed to further alienate the world's best golfers.

"Golf is about character and how a player stands up to adversity," he sneered. "But, like a lot of things in life, golf has gone soft.

"Playing this type of course requires imagination and it requires handling frustration.

"I know there is a bit of a lottery in the way this course plays. Top players take badly to bad bounces. But the element of luck is critical.

"Take that away and you don't have a real game of golf. They are too pampered now."

Amidst the fast-accelerating level of complaints, the Royal & Ancient Golf Club claimed that all was well, that the jungle-like rough had been neither fertilised nor excessively watered and that, besides, they had been unable to do anything about it all. The problem, they claimed, was caused solely by the weather immediately preceding the championship.

Except it wasn't of course. Almost three months before the championship, your correspondent had played the Carnoustie course in the annual media gathering hosted by the R&A. After my round I was - funnily enough - standing at the bar in the hotel behind the 18th green waiting to be served. As I did so, the then secretary of the R&A, Sir Michael Bonallack, approached and asked my opinion of the course.

This was fun too...

"There is nothing wrong with having long, wispy rough that introduces doubt in a player," confirms Scotland's Andrew Coltart, who finished in a tie for 18th back in '99. "But long, lush grass only requires us to mindlessly reach for the lob wedge and is just plain daft.

"Eight years ago, the rough was just so thick and looked to me like it had been fertilised. There was no chance to get the ball on the green and no chance even to take a chance, if you see what I mean. I played with Tiger Woods on the last day and even he couldn't hit out of that stuff. So it was boring to play and, I'm sure, to watch. It was drive, chop out, wedge to green."

And Barker Davis, writing for the Sunday Telegraph, offers these remembrances...

Lee Westwood

The first round I was playing with Greg Norman, and he was playing really well, a couple under or something. On 17 he hit it right, not far right, just a couple of feet off the edge of the fairway and you virtually couldn't see it. He ended up making seven or eight and that summed it up. But I like the course, it's up in my top three with Birkdale and Muirfield.

Richard Green

I remember playing the last couple of holes on Friday just praying to get off the golf course. I was just in a lot of mental pain. There was one tee shot on the fourth that I hooked to the right. I ended up slashing about in the rough for ages. But it's still one of my favourite courses, up there with Kingston Heath in Australia and Royal Lytham.

Hank Gola, New York Daily News

It was like watching a slow-motion car wreck. When Jean Van de Velde went into the Barry Burn and rolled up his pants, it was the most amazing thing I've ever seen. The Frenchman goes up in flames. I remember walking in the play-off with Davis Love III, who was smoking a cigar at the time, and he said they got what they deserved for the set-up.

Thomas Levet

On the sixth hole I hit a drive and it bounced 90 degrees right and finished in the rough by two inches. From there I couldn't get the fairway back. So I made a drive, my sand iron five times and a putt - seven, double bogey. It was so deep I didn't know if that ball was going to go one yard or 80. But what I remember most is Jean Van de Velde. I was at the airport with Dean Robertson.

We were sitting in the lounge at Edinburgh watching Jean play the last hole.

It was a great moment of golf, like a great tragedy, but it was not very good to know it was a Frenchman. We couldn't believe it. We were speechless. It was crazy that day.

Michael Campbell

I think I shot 13 over and missed the cut by one. I remember sitting down with a bunch of players and watching the coverage on the Friday afternoon. It was carnage. It was pathetic really. I watched Norman hit it two yards in the rough. I wasn't laughing at the time. I was shaking my head saying: "This is not right, this is not good TV."

"How can you not look at scores?"

Doug Ferguson looks at this year's "rigorous" majors and wonders what exactly that means. This part was particularly fun:

Jim Hyler, head of the championship committee at the USGA, preached all week at Oakmont that the mission was to create a "rigorous test" at the U.S. Open, but he offered a peculiar defense when 35 players failed to break 80 in the second round, and someone suggested the USGA again had gone over the top.

"The players' scores mean nothing to us," he said. "Absolutely nothing."

But if that's the case, how does he know the test has been rigorous?

"We're not performing in front of judges," Justin Leonard said. "They don't rate every shot. How can you not look at scores?"

Oh Justin, really, they aren't fixated on par. They only break out the '96 Chateau Lafite Rothschild if the winning score is +8 or higher. Special occasions only.

The Royal & Ancient paid more attention to the players' reactions than their scores, and chief executive Peter Dawson conceded that Carnoustie was too extreme in 1999. Asked if the R&A regretted how the course was set up, he replied, "I think so."

"To be honest, we regard player reaction as very important," Dawson said. "The reaction there was clearly more negative than we would liked to have seen."

What to expect this time?

"We are not seeking carnage," Dawson said. "We're seeking an arena where the players can display their skills to the best effect."

As usually, the R&A's head man had to offset his sound thinking with the ridiculous:

"The key part of the game of golf is to have an element of unfairness and to be able to handle it when it happens to you," Dawson said. "If everything was totally fair, it would be dull."

You see Peter, that's Mother Nature's job, perhaps with the occasional assist from a funny bounce. The bad breaks from silly fairway contours, knee high rough and bad hole locations? That's a different deal. It's called contrived. And usually the people doing the contriving are the same ones who obsess about how winning scores might reflet on themselves.  

Skill and Southern Hills

From Doug Ferguson's AP notes column:

“I don’t mind Mother Nature slapping us around as long as they understand skill is the thing that wins tournaments, not luck.” -Stuart Appleby, on the setups at major championships

Having just toured Southern Hills on a delightful day in Tulsa (really!), I can say that it would be nice if Mother Nature cooperated by not dropping so much water on the course. Due to a number of circumstances (which I'll be writing about for a publication in advance of the PGA), Southern Hills really has a chance to shine this year...if it would stop raining! 

“It’s not rocket science not to put the flag where it was."

This one includes a wrinkle I've never heard of before, and I'm a connoisseur of course setup debacle stories!

Golfweek's Alistair Tait reports.

International Final Qualifying for the Open Championship at Sunningdale, England, turned into a farce when players couldn’t get near the pin at the par-3 fourth hole.
 
It brought back visions of the seventh at Shinnecock Hills during the 2004 U.S. Open, when no player could hold the green even with a perfectly struck shot.

But remember, Furman Bisher says that was just because that darn rain that was not in the forecast never came! 

Martin Kippax, the R&A’s championship chairman, set up the pins at Sunningdale.

Why did that sentence not come as a shock. 

Most of them were fine, with the exception of the fouth on Sunningdale’s Old Course.
 
Eight players completed the hole before Kippax realized he’d messed up. Argentina’s Ricardo Gonzalez five-putted, and Australian Brett Rumford four-putted. Four-putting isn’t unusual, but Rumford had hit his tee shot to 2 feet.
 
Play was suspended so the hole could be repositioned. The eight players who had already played the hole were carted back out after they had finished 18 holes so they could replay the hole.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, they got a replay! I wonder what would have happened if they made a higher score than before? Do they get to pick the lowest!?

The result was a mixed bag. Gonzalez made par the second time and his score changed from 70 to 67. England’s Richard Bland made birdie the first time around but parred the hole the second time to move his score from 72 to 73. Sweden’s Fredrik Anderson Hed was affected the most. He parred the hole on his first attempt but double bogeyed the hole on his second to change a 66 to a 68.
 
“I chose the pin positions because of the weather we’ve had and the forecast we had for today,” Kippax said. “I was then made aware by a referee on the course that we had a potential problem. I went out and saw that it was in an unplayable position.
 
“So, after consulting with various people – certainly the European Tour – I suspended play and moved the pin position.
 
“I admit it was a mistake and the responsibility lies on me and me only. I apologized to the eight, and Richard Bland said it was not in his interests and asked, ‘Why was it there in the first place?’
 
“They were perfectly justifiable things to say, but I told them it was only going to be equitable if everybody had to play it again whether it’s good or bad for them.”
 
Plaudits go to Kippax for putting his hand up and admitting his error, but I tend to agree with Anderson Hed.

Oh yes, big plaudits!

“I think the European Tour should do the pins,” he said. “Every time I’ve played in an event run by the R&A there have been one or two that were barely playable.”
 
Bland was just as caustic in his condemnation of the R&A. “It’s not rocket science not to put the flag where it was. Anything with a small bit of speed that didn’t go in was going to roll off the green.”

"Will they be talking about the 2007 US Open in 2042?"

Uh, that's a no!

The New Zealand Herald's Peter Williams is bored with excessive major setups and issues a warning that will inevitably go ignored because it's way too nuanced.

Golf, like all sports, is in the entertainment business. Its money comes through being an exciting spectacle on television.

The best TV sport is always when the best players perform at their optimum in conditions fair to everyone. I don't think those conditions prevailed at Augusta in April and certainly not at Oakmont last week. In two major championships this year, nobody has finished under par. That's entertainment? Give me a break. It's survival and not much fun to watch or play.

The story goes that after Johnny Miller shot 63 to win the 1973 US Open at Oakmont, the USGA and Oakmont membership vowed that never again would they be embarrassed by somebody ripping a championship course apart.

Embarrassed? That was brilliant play; engaging, exciting and still talked about 35 years later. Will they be talking about the 2007 US Open in 2042? About the greatest player of all time not able to make a birdie in his last 32 holes because of greens so fast you couldn't hit a putt firmly enough to hold the line?

"It is making us look like fools."

I didn't catch these comments from Michael Campbell during the U.S. Open coverage:

"It is on the edge of embarrassing some of the guys," Campbell said.

"It wasn't much fun out there, put it that way. I used to enjoy coming to major tournaments and playing them.

"But when you are out there grinding your butt off for bogeys and pars it is not very nice.

"We felt that at Augusta this year. Normally you get a guy charging on the back nine and shooting 30 like Jack Nicklaus did in 1986. To me that is exciting TV and for the players and the spectators, too.

"But now there are just guys making bogeys and it is making us look like fools."

But don't you see Michael, that's the very point. You and your cohorts had to go and make all that money, get the babes and worst of all drive the ball 350 yards, making these governing body dudes look bad. You must pay! 

A Firm Progression?

The most interesting player comment out of Oakmont came from 2006 final group contender Kenneth Ferrie, talking to Gary Van Sickle:

"This is the first time I've played a golf course where it didn't rain and the course has gotten softer every round.

"It's mind boggling, really. Thursday and Friday you're trying to bounce the ball up onto the greens. Today, I actually had a few shots hit the green and spin back."

The USGA's Mike Davis gets points for applying water to prevent an all out debacle. And as you may recall, the Masters this year saw borderline firm and fast all week, then applied water to the greens after the committee had gotten in their licks.

But that's the Masters and at least they recognized the need for the traditional Sunday fireworks.

The U.S. Open is a different beast. It should be the most difficult major of the year, but shouldn't that difficulty ideally progress from day one to the finish, with Sunday's "examination" being the culmination of a week's worth of golf?

Personally, I have long respected the USGA history of giggling at the PGA Tour's willingness to play lift, clean and place. You may remember that Tom Meeks noted they would not be playing "lift, clean and cheat" after Wednesday's deluge at the 1996 U.S. Open. ("Commissioner, I have Mr. Meeks on line 1 to apologize...)

The blue coats are big rub 'o the green guys and gals, touting their devotion to playing the ball down no matter what. And firm greens and landing areas have always been priority 1.  Play it as it lies.

Yet they now set up courses with such confining width, extreme speeds and different rough heights for different holes that they are having to use water to dictate the way the ball reacts when it hits the ground.

So I'm interested in what everyone thinks of this notion of a tournament course getting softer each day without rain. Were the measures taken at Oakmont a positive direction for the game or will it open the door for all sorts of strange antics (particularly with the advent of Sub-Air systems where a committee could present radical extremes from day to day)?

"If the USGA isn't fixated on par, why does it usually take one or two holes that members play as par-5s, and turn them into par-4s for the U.S. Open?"

Brad Myers in The Journal News wrote this column that appeared on Thursday, but I just stumbled on it and it proves timely in light of this week's U.S. Open. And proves even more timely in light of the media's dismal performance at Wednesday's USGA news conference...

David Fay, executive director of the USGA, recently spoke at a media day for the 2009 U.S. Women's Open, to be held at Saucon Valley in Bethlehem, Pa. If it seems like they're planning a little too far ahead on that one, it's because they are.

Afterward, I asked Fay a few questions about the U.S. Open. The first: Does the USGA strive to have the winner shoot close to even par?

"We're not fixated on par," Fay demanded. In fact, he seemed a little offended.

OK. How would the USGA react if there was a U.S. Open where the winner shot 20-under par, second place shot 18-under, and someone shooting 10-under finished 17th?

If Fay wasn't offended before, he was now. He paused, searching for words, before saying, "It would be an aberration."

The next question: If the USGA isn't fixated on par, why does it usually take one or two holes that members play as par-5s, and turn them into par-4s for the U.S. Open?

"That's nothing new," Fay said. "We've been doing that for years, since at least the 1950s."

That answered how long it has been done. It didn't answer why. But there would be no more questions, because Fay politely, and conveniently, excused himself.