COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.—It was a bear of a course, and fittingly, there was a bear on the course.
A black bear came out of the mountains to take some of the focus off the perilous pin placements and faster, drier greens that flustered the field at the U.S. Senior Open, where only five golfers shot below par Friday.
Fred Funk’s 1-under 69 gave him the lead at the halfway point. His two-day score of 6-under 134 is two shots ahead of Eduardo Romero (69) and four ahead of Mark McNulty (70), Tom Kite (71) and John Cook (72).
Stealing the show, however, was a black bear that ambled out of the mountains in the morning and crossed the 13th fairway in front of Bernard Langer and his caddie before checking out spectators outside the ropes.
Nobody was harmed, and neither was the bear.
“(Jack) Nicklaus isn’t here, so I guess that’s a substitute,” cracked Funk.
Although tournament officials were prepared to tranquilize the animal and stop play were it to become aggressive or spooked, after several minutes the bear crawled through a drainage pipe on the ninth hole that leads to the West Course, then went through another drainage pipe and into the wilderness, leaving unnerved galleries and golfers behind.
USGA spokesman Pete Kowalski said wildlife experts were called in and would be on the course throughout the rest of the tournament in case the bear or its chums decide to return for another look around.
The course, carved into the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, serves as host to all kinds of critters, including bobcats, coyotes, deer, mountain lions, red foxes, snakes and turkeys.
But a bear?
That was a new one even for these grizzled veterans, many of whom played with Nicklaus, the “Golden Bear” who menaced his share of golfers over the years.
Funk said he heard tournament officials talking about possibly having to halt play “because it would be pretty scary if it got a little panicky and some spectator or some of the golfers were too close—that wouldn’t have been an issue if a caddie had gotten too close.”
Aside from the bear, a few deer and red-tailed foxes were spotted Friday.
“You don’t get that every week,” Cook said.
There were also plenty of sightings of red-faced golfers, befuddled by the pin placements, particularly on Nos. 4 and 8, short par-3s where tap after tap rolled right off the hard, sloping greens.
“Every hole was on a slant,” Cook said.
“The USGA put some pin placements on us today that almost defy the imagination,” Kite said. “It’s just treacherous, treacherous greens out there with some unbelievable pin placements.”
Greg Norman, whose 73 put him nine shots off the lead and in a tie for 18th, said simply: “I’m not going to comment about the golf course. The USGA should know better.”
“Wow. That course is right on the edge,” Cook said.
“Well, he didn’t say we were over the edge,” responded Jim Hyler, chairman of the USGA’s championship committee.
“We try to give the players what we think is a hard golf course but fair and today there’s no question we had a couple of hard hole locations but they were well within our tolerances.”
Hyler said the course would be watered overnight and intermittently as needed Saturday to combat the heat wave gripping Colorado Springs, which just had its driest month since 1924.
“We like where the course is now. We don’t want it to get any harder.”
Neither do the golfers.
