"I think, finally, we are playing a good golf course"

Steve Elling reports that Vijay Singh delivered an impromptu rant on the Oakland Hills PGA setup, perhaps egged on by the modest setup and more reasonable greens at Ridgewood.

"I think, finally, we are playing a good golf course," Singh said of Ridgewood.

Ouch. Within moments, he made it doubly clear that he was both praising Ridgewood and pasting Oakland Hills.

Two things to consider when weighing Singh's considered opinion: First, he is a former PGA Championship winner, so he's not going to launch into a dated diatribe without good reason. Then again, he was credited with five-putting one of Oakland Hills' undulating greens, which Jack Nicklaus once characterized as the toughest in golf.

"From tee to green that's one of the best golf courses I have played, but it's a disgrace to have greens like that on a golf course that good," Singh said of Oakland Hills, site of multiple U.S. Opens and PGAs in years past, not to mention the 2004 Ryder Cup.

"If the members were to play the speed of the greens we played, they would all quit," he said. "I don't think there would be any members left.

"I don't know what the PGA was going at. I don't think they could ever hold another golf tournament on that course if the greens are like that."

The course underwent a tweaking and lengthening three years ago by designer Rees Jones, but the greens were essentially untouched. Maybe they should have been bulldozed, too, Singh said.

"They should get somebody to redesign those greens," he groused. "From tee to green it's one of the best golf courses you can ever play. But on the greens, it was just a disaster."