"There's nothing quite like Oakmont"
/Gerry Dulac of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette sets the table for this week's Oakmont-hosted U.S. Open which benefits from a roster of legendary winners, a proven design, grand setting and a sharp contrast to last year's first-ever lunar national championship.
Dulac writes:
What makes Oakmont so darn difficult?
The simple answer is the greens, arguably the fastest and smoothest in the world. They pitch and tilt like a three-legged table, and stopping a ball on their surfaces is like stopping a marble on a car hood. Mr. Davis said he will keep the speed of the greens the same as 2007, when they registered between 14 and 14.5 on the Stimpmeter, a device that measures the speed of a green. A typical reading for PGA tour events might be about 10 or 11.
When told a week ago of the USGA’s plans, a flabbergasted Mr. Nicklaus said, “Then nobody will finish. It would be a really tough golf course at that speed.”
“I had to go through that little gauntlet of trying to put the hammer down again and finish real strongly,” Miller said. “It's sort of a little legacy. Jack sure had a bigger legacy than I ever dreamed of, but it's nice to have that one round that people remember.”
To Nicklaus, who finished tied for fourth in the 1973 U.S. Open with fellow legends Arnold Palmer and Lee Trevino three strokes back of Miller, it will be remembered as a rare Sunday at a major in which he had little chance to take control.
“He was done before I started, or close to it,” Nicklaus said. “I mean, I was in contention, but he blew right by all the contenders. He left us in the dark.”
In his introduction of his father last week at the Memorial, John Miller Jr. detailed his father's demeanor at the height of his career in the '70s. When the ball would go up after an iron shot, so would one of Miller's hands.
“And the reason why it did is because he knew that thing was stiff before it landed,” Miller Jr. said. “He really just had an ability to hit the ball so close.”
BTW you can follow Gerry's coverage for the hometown paper this week.
Also worth a follow is Erickson, who you can find here.
