Hindsight Open Underway, Justin Rose Pleas Leading At The Turn

Now that Memorial winner Justin Rose isn't in the U.S. Open field (but Vijay Singh is!), it's fascinating that people are chiming in to demand change to the system so that such egregious oversights never happen again. Where were they last week when Singh got his handout for never sniffing a USGA title?

Or maybe Jim Nantz just got to them?

Anyway, even though Rose had the last year to figure out a way to get in the event, that's not stopping some from ignoring what makes the U.S. Open such a beautiful thing.

Mark Roe writes:

Having won the Memorial, Justin shouldn't have had to go to qualifying. It simply isn't justifiable that somebody who shoots a pair of 68's at Walton Heath - and perhaps wins a play-off - gets into the US Open at the expense of somebody who has beaten a world-class field at Memorial.
The system is wrong and it needs to be adjusted.

Doug Ferguson makes the case for the Memorial winner getting an exemption out of respect for Jack. Of course, then shouldn't Bay Hill or the Byron Nelson also qualify? I prefer David Fay's defense:

"I keep saying this until I'm blue in the face," David Fay said Tuesday as he drove to the Curtis Cup. "It's not the best field in golf. It never pretended to be. It's the most democratic championship. In a perfect world, we wouldn't have special exemptions. But if you can keep half the field open to qualifiers ... that's why we have 9,000 entries."