More Final Open Championship Reads

SI.com's Gary Van Sickle tells us what we learned from the Open. Ken Brown pens a piece for the Telegraph and believes Tiger's performance was the most impressive since Faldo at St. Andrews. He also writes about the one drive Tiger did hit, with the ball speed (191 mph).

James Corrigan says Hoylake was a big success and may next see the Open in 2016. Lewine Mair talks to the R&A's Martin Kippax about Tiger's strategy.

Barker Davis writes in the Washington Times about the low scoring and says, big deal.

"At the end of the day, a win is a win, and it doesn't matter if it is at 5-under par or 20-under par," Goosen said. "At a major championship, you are always going to see the top players rise to the top, and that is what you are seeing already. If it's 20 under, it's 20 under. Who cares, as long as we have a good champion."

The USGA, of course, operates as if it has no such concerns, annually converting a venerable track perfectly capable of defending itself into a torture chamber demanding defensive golf.
Unlike the British Open, which always (forgiving Canoustie) relies solely on the elements for protection, the U.S. Open specializes in contrivance -- single-file fairways, graduated rough and greens crustier than month-old pizza.

As a result, the U.S. championship is routinely the dullest major of the year, an interminable par-fest that is entertaining for only about 45 minutes every Father's Day during the inevitable stretch-run debacle (see Phil Mickelson, Colin Montgomerie, etc.).

U.S. Open's aren't won; they are survived. Name the last player to win a U.S. Open by making a birdie on the last hole.

He also pulls this beautiful quote out of Dan Jenkins, who sadly did not have the space to include such a rant in his August Golf Digest recap of the U.S. Open (it's not posted online and not listed in the table of contents, but I know it's there because I read it at the beach today):

"They talk all that nonsense about identifying the best player, and then they give you Steve Jones or Michael Campbell or Andy North or Lee Janzen. Great, how'd you do those weeks?" said Dan Jenkins, the planet's dean of golf writers, scoffing at the USGA from an ocean away yesterday. "[Heck], the U.S. Open gave us Jack Fleck, the worst result in the history of sports by a nudge over the zebras giving gold to the Russians. ... The USGA hasn't identified the best players. All they've done is make the Open unwatchable.

And finally, there's a story that really didn't get much attention because I think many of us were enthralled with Tiger Woods' performance. It'll be interesting to see if the weeklies take a tougher look at the R&A's hole locations over the weekend, which apparently were Meeksian in character.

From Mark Garrod on SportlingLife.com: 

Although Hoylake undoubtedly lacks the "wow" factor of some other Open venues Woods stated: "With the course being this fast it lent itself to just amazing creativity.

"Granted, if you would have had easier pins I'm sure it (the scoring) would have gone lower - these are the most difficult pins (hole locations) I've ever seen at an Open championship.

"A couple of times you feel like if you hit a putt too hard you'll actually putt it right off the green and you never have that feeling at an Open. But this week it was certainly the case.

"I think because the yardage played short because it was so fast - you hit three-wood, driver 380 yards and you're going to have a lot of short irons - the only defence they had was pin locations and hard, dry conditions.

"We couldn't really go all that low."

Eighteen under kept things respectable and the fact that nobody scored lower than 65 when all the talk was of a possible first 62 in major golf history then Hoylake could not be described as being brought to its knees.

Hmmm...so the R&A does or does not care about scoring?