"[His comments] got me, they got our membership and they got the USGA"
/Golfdom's Larry Aylward caught up with Oakmont superintendent John Zimmers and the USGA's Mike Davis after the U.S. Open and he asked about Phil Mickelson's remarks.
"[His comments] got me, they got our membership and they got the USGA," Zimmers told Golfdom. "Simply put, 99 percent of the players said it was the hardest U.S. Open they have ever played in. But it was absolutely the fairest one, too. It was a true test of golf."
To that, Zimmers said Tiger Woods came up to him after the tournament, hugged him and said, "That was tough." But Woods made the comment as a compliment, not a complaint.
Davis told Golfdom that the USGA thought Mickelson's comments were "perplexing."
"Maybe in this litigious society, where you're not responsible to anything that happens to you, maybe this was just something where he didn't want to be responsible and he wanted to put the blame on someone else," Davis said. "I don't think the USGA is ready to all of the sudden have no rough at the U.S. Open because somebody hurt his wrist in it three weeks before. But having said that, I will say Phil is a good player, and he was playing such great golf coming into the U.S. Open that it's too bad he hurt his wrist. ... Sometimes we all say things in the heat of the moment that, in hindsight, maybe we take back."