According to the USGA, the U.S. Open is “the most rigorous, yet fair, examination of golf skills, testing all forms of shotmaking.”
That’s a definition that somehow doesn’t seem to encompass the pressure, the torture and mental and physical agony that 156 of the world’s best players will be subjected to this week at Winged Foot Golf Club in suburban New York.
“You’re excited because it is the U.S. Open, but then you realize what it is you’re going into,” Australian Adam Scott said. “You know it’s going to be the toughest course that you play all year.”
“You can hit good shots and feel like you’re not rewarded for them,” added Jim Furyk, the 2003 Open champion. “You get upset, you get mad, you get frustrated, but you have to realize going into the Open that – you know what? – it’s not going to go your way sometimes.
“On Sunday, if you go out late, you’re going to have to be a magician to shoot even par. You have to know all that going in. When you’re playing well, and scoring well, it’s easy to have a great attitude. If you go out there and struggle a little bit, and things don’t go your way, it’s easy to get down on yourself.”
The A.W. Tillinghast design, which will play as a 7,264-yard, par-70 this week, is already the stuff of legend. When the Open was held there in 1974, Hale Irwin won with a score of 7-over-par. That lent an easy title to journalist Dick Schaap’s account of the tournament – Massacre at Winged Foot.
Jay Haas has been on the PGA and/or Champions Tour for more than 26 years, but in 1974 he was a 20-year-old amateur playing in his first Open. About 10 days ago, Haas looked back at what transpired at Winged Foot, the memories making him shake his head decades later.
“I played 72 holes and made one birdie,” Haas said. “On Saturday I played with Johnny Miller. He had shot a 63 in the final round the year before (at Oakmont) to win. Everybody was screaming at him, ’63, 63.’ Seventy-three would have been a hell of a score that year.
“It was the hardest golf course I’ve ever played. The greens were as hard and quick as I’ve ever seen. Only two players broke 290. I just remember telling myself that if that was the kind of courses they played on the PGA Tour, I was way, way far away from being able to compete out there.”
But if you’re thinking that – given the advances in equipment, with balls that fly farther, and athletes who are in better condition – the track will play much easier this time around, you would be mistaken.
The third hole is a par-3 that is listed on the scorecard at 216 yards. However, it can, and almost most certainly will for at least one day, play as long as 243 yards. During his practice rounds there two weeks ago, Phil Mickelson played from the expanded distance and hit a 4-iron – and then pitched it up to the green from 50 yards away.
“Unless it’s downwind and the greens are soft, I’m most likely going to do that every day,” he said. “I’m planning on hitting 4-iron and having about a 50-yard pitch.”
There will be similar booby traps on virtually every hole. A few years ago, Mickelson smirked that he didn’t mind spraying his drives out over the gallery because he could get a good lie on grounds that had been trampled on by thousands of people. This year, the rough will be a couple of inches off of the fairway, but if Mickelson hits it among the masses, there’s every chance he won’t be able to find his ball amid growth that could be as high as a foot.
“This year there are three cuts of rough and the third is totally unplayable,” Scott said.
“There are lots of balls out there that have been lost by the members,” Mickelson said last week. “I predict someone will hit the wrong ball during the tournament.”
The idea of having to lay up to play a par-3, or not taking a hack at the green from off of the fairway would be inconceivable at most tournaments, but not the Open, which more often than not is as much an examination of a player’s mental faculties as his golf swing.
“You’re going to hit some bad shots, but it’s important to try and keep your frustration level down and play through them,” Scott said.
“Even something like weather is a factor,” Jack Nicklaus said. “You’re going to get bad weather in June. It’s already tough on you mentally because the U.S. Open is the biggest one of them all, but there are a lot of other things to deal with.”
In his past 10 events entering the 2003 Open at Olympia Fields in suburban Chicago, Furyk had six top-five finishes.
“I was playing great,” he said. “I thought I had a really good chance at winning the tournament.”
Conditions were even easy on the opening day of play. But on his ninth hole, Furyk stood in a greenside bunker, needing to get up-and-down to make the turn at 2-over.
“I did it, and then I went to the (back nine) and shot 5-under,” he said. “If it would have been on Sunday, without as many chances or holes left to rally and make birdies, that could have snowballed on you the other way, but I’d hung in there, and stayed patient, and all of a sudden I got on a roll.”
By that Sunday evening, Furyk had won his first major championship, shooting 8-under 272. To hear the players talk in the buildup to this year’s Open, they’d be happy if three-fourths of that margin were taken away.
“The USGA can make the course as hard as they want, but Winged Foot is such a good course it won’t require ridiculous things to keep par a good score,” Mickelson said. “Looking at it now, I don’t see how guys are going to shoot under par.”
The U.S. Open
Facts and figures for the 106th U.S. Open golf championship:
When: Thursday-Sunday
Site: Winged Foot Country Club (West Course)
The course: The West Course at Winged Foot was built in 1923 by A.W. Tillinghast, who was told by club founders to “give us a man-sized course.” It has been a man-sized test for the U.S. Open four times and for the PGA Championship in 1997. Winged Foot is best known for the severe slopes on the greens and the deep, penalizing bunkers. It will play 277 yards longer than the 1997 PGA Championship.
Length: 7,264 yards
Par: 35-35-70
Format: 72 holes of stroke play
Cut: Top 60 and ties, and anyone within 10 strokes of the lead after 36 holes.
Playoff, if necessary: 18 holes of stroke play Monday, June 19
Field: 156 players (seven amateurs)
Purse: $6.5 million
Winner’s share: $1.17 million
Defending champion: Michael Campbell
Last year: Campbell closed with a 1-under-par 69 at Pinehurst No. 2 for a two-shot victory over Tiger Woods. Campbell had a one-shot lead when he hit a terrific bunker shot to 6 feet to save par. Two groups ahead of him, Woods made bogeys on the 16th and 17th holes, and Campbell clinched victory with a 25-foot birdie putt on the par-3 17th. He finished at even-par 280 and became the first player from New Zealand to win a major since Bob Charles in the 1963 British Open.
Past U.S. Open champions at Winged Foot: Bobby Jones (1929), Billy Casper (1959), Hale Irwin (1974), Fuzzy Zoeller (1984).
Last major at Winged Foot: Davis Love III won his only major in the 1997 PGA Championship.
Tiger tales: Woods will be playing for the first time since the Masters nine weeks ago, the longest break of his career.
Television: Thursday and Friday, 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., ESPN; 1 p.m. to 3 p.m., KUSA-9; 3 p.m. to 5 p.m., ESPN. Saturday and Sunday, 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., KUSA-9.
Anthony Cotton can be reached at 303-820-1292 or acotton@denverpost.com.
