118th US Open Walking Thread, presented by Johnnie Walker

The first two Opens at Shinnecock were conducted without major complaint by the pros nor very high scores. The course is obviously very susceptible to damage from not that unusual (windy at the edge of the Atlantic Ocean) weather conditions if it's set up for a championship now. Twenty years of enhanced equipment and uh, training methods face the championship setup to be more extreme. As for the course itself, a very great many of the country's classic courses feature many similar holes. Firestone, Baltusrol, the Country Club, etc. That's how they were built back in the day. The last two times the Open went to new courses, Chambers Bay and Erin Hills, were not a success.
PS: When one holds a tournament at the eastern edge of Long Island, one is begging for half empty grandstands. It's very hard to get to and really not worth the effort for a day trip unless you own your own helicopter.

 

Shinnecock and Firestone are both golf courses. That's pretty much where the similarities end.

 

Just rename it the USGA Open.
It's all about them and how bad they can trick up a course.
The actual playing of the tournament is irrelevant to them.

 

This whole Mickelson thing is a prime example of why some people can't stand golf. All this over-the-top "integrity of the game" posturing.

Give him the two-stroke penalty. Chuckle about it. And be done with it.

Not to pick on rich, who seems like a fine fellow, but:

He did not sell government secrets.

 

And actually, Daly finished his round that day.

ESPN Golf Online: 1999 U.S. Open: Daly snaps at USGA over Pinehurst's conditions

 

Was Phil wrong? Absolutely yes.
He's one of the most popular and respected players in the game. Easily in the Top 5. Could you ever imagine Palmer or Nicklaus doing that? No way.
He's better than that. He's the one that hit the putt too hard. Man up. Keep batting it around til you make a putt. Write your score down. Move on.
I can still hear Peter Alliss in the background. "What are you doing? What on Earth are you doing?"

 

Yep. 2 shot penalty was it.

 

You enjoy train wrecks don't you?

 

This is what Phil should have done. Instead of the whole running on the green spectacle, take an unplayable. Same penalty.
Would be funny too, considering how unplayable the USGA made it yesterday.

 

Tee to green the course is not brutal. At all. Yes, off line drives are punished, but there are some seriously wide fairways on the course.

So the course is basically tough at the green. And it’s tough in much the same way other recent US Opens have been - mowed-to-the-nub smallish greens where the ball just runs like water on a table.

Mickelson - who don’t care for - is nothing if not passive aggressive. He did that for a specific reason, as a fuck you, and (cleverly?) used the USGA rules as a cover for having done it.

 

What Phil did was unmistakably an impromptu criticism of the course setup. He did it in a way that the USGA understood. And I think the general social media reaction - what’s the big deal? - favored what Phil did. Remember this is a guy who claims to love the US Open most of all.

If USGA had DQd, it would have shown guts, but hurt its rep even more with players. Phil seems to have become the cool uncle to a lot of them, and thus struts around as he pleases.

 

It's one thing to break a rule because you don't know them, which is what happens to 99.99999 percent of golfers when there any penalty strokes handed out; it's another thing to do it intentionally. In 40 years of covering golf I can think of no more than four or five instances where golfers broke a rule and knew full well that's what they were doing at the time.

On the first tee Sunday, I hope they announce his name and you can hear the boos in New York City.