2015 U.S. Open thread

Too bad we couldn't pair Joe Buck with Artie Lange.

 

Not every shot that doesn't go into the hole is a choke.

 

I think it'll be somewhere in the 276-282 range unless the weather's bad.

I don't anticipate it being much harder than Whistling Straits, but we'll see.

 

You guys are hard on Buck. I like Joe and think they'll do well. Not a huge Norman fan though. But we'll see.

I'll miss Miller.

 

Love a West Coast Open since our city championship is on Father's Day weekend every year, and I have to cover it, meaning a miss a ton of the Open action. Not so this year. Can't wait. If you follow U.S. Open Championships on Facebook, they've been doing neat fly-by videos of all the holes in the run-up to the event.

 

I'm no Buck fan, but I think was a legit criticism 5 years ago. I think he has definitely upped the enthusiasm on NFL broadcasts (I don't watch enough MLB on Fox to know).

I think Buck brings gravitas to events that few pbp guys do. Hannah Storm's husband (name escapes me) has been the lead guy on NBC for a long time. It won't be a stretch to be better than him.

 

Weather is supposed to be beautiful. Late starting time on Sat/Sunday for final groups will provide great visuals of the early-evening sun over the Puget Sound. Longest days of the year in terms of daylight, too, should be light until 9 p.m. or so. I think the players will enjoy not baking in the heat or soaking in high humidity.

 

Dan Hicks?

 

For those seeking an edge in any U.S. Open drafts, there's been a clear pattern to winners of Opens held at courses for the first time. There have been 11 post-
World War II U.S. Opens taken to new courses where the USGA decided it was good enough to give it a return visit: Medinah, Olympic, Oak Hill, Southern Hills, Congressional, Hazeltine, Pebble Beach, Shinnecock Hills, Pinehurst, Bethpage and Torrey Pines. I'm sure that some of those courses were considered just as strange and foreign at the time as Chambers Bay (Pebble? Shinnecock? Pinehurst?) Hall of Famers won 10 of the 11, with the only one being Jack Fleck at Olympic in 1955. The other winners: Woods, Nicklaus, Floyd, Middlecoff, Stewart, Venturi, Bolt and Jacklin.
I guess the moral of the story is that the great ones adapt quicker. I think some of this talk that the quirkiness of the course is going to give us a winner like Brian Harman or Steve Marino. It simply hasn't happened in the past.

 

Joe Buck.


Fuck.

 

Phil is -2 through 5. Better than that, Natalie Gulbis is providing on course coverage of the featured group online today.