U.S. Open Fails to Meet Standard
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by user Gmaddux04
After watching some of the U.S. Open on Sunday, or Tiger's Open as I like to call it, I harken back to a time of many yesteryears.
No, it's not when Geoff Ogilvy won the whole thing in 2006 with a staggering +5 for the tournament. And no, it's not the now infamous Jean Van de Velde incident either.
I think back of when I was a young lad, having first moved down to Florida and hacking it with the most medicore of them at Eagle Harbor. Wormburners, slices into people's backyards, duffs and chips 15 yards past the green. You name it, I probably did it. Once (I cannot make this up) I even took a 3-wood off the teebox and shot the ball directly into the lake at which I was looking at for my drive, an impressive 90 degrees to the right of where the path should have been.
If I wanted to see golfers make terrible shot after terrible shot, get caught up in weeds thicker than a Guiness draft, three-putt and double bogey on a consistent basis I would have taped any round I ever played and watched it. Instead I saw this travesty reincarnated at "famed" Oakmont Golf Course.
My major qualm about this whole thing is the previously stated fact that the winner of last year's U.S. Open won with a +5 score. Logically you would think that whoever commisions the PGA would see to it that next year the scores would drop to, oh, say par for the course?
How does this concept slip by most people? Par literally means neither great nor bad, average, OK, middle of the road. When talking about the tournament to my father last night, he made a valid point that +5, Angel Cabrera's winning score yesterday, is only 1.25 above par per round. So the officials at Oakmont had gauged a par 70 with the best score topping out at 71.25. Pretty respectable considering there was a 300-yard par 3 on that course this weekend.
Angel Cabrera, nicknamed The Duck, chips on the ninth fairway on Sunday.
The way I understand it, and correct me if I am missing something, is that these are the best players the U.S.A. has to offer. With that said, are we going to assume they all played bad because they were all over par?
I was watching some coverage on Wednesday with players taking practice rounds and Andy North reported that one of the entrants, a well-known golfer whose name escapes me at the moment, said that he shot a +1 in that practice round and said it was some of the best golf he ever played.
Wow, a modern day Nostradamus it seems. Assuming he wasn't just saying that for shock value, this player ultimately revealed that there is nothing any player could possibly do to end up "par" for the course over four rounds. Just not possible.
After looking at everyone's scores, only eight rounds were recorded as being under par, two of which belonged to Cabrera(69, 69), and one to Tiger Woods(69). Now, arguably the best player in the world is going to find some way to shoot under par and it should make sense that the man who won the tournament played some of the best golf of his life to capture one the four majors. This just doesn't seem like golf to me, especially golf I may or may not be watching on television.
In total, 438 rounds of 18 holes were played over the past four days, meaning that 1.83% of those rounds were played under par. If you take Tiger and Cabrera out, that number drops to 1.14% in the minuses. Regardless of what petty percentage we are looking at, when I think of par I think of half the field, including the greats, being able to shoot under it. Man, they were a long way from 50 percent.
Golf, in some light, is a lot like tennis. It's basically a tournament and the competitors that are playing outstanding will rise to the top, leaving their conquered behind. The stars will shine and we shall crown a winner. The U.S. Open this year, and last year for that matter, has been the polar opposite.
The golfers out there were playing not to lose instead of playing to win. Unfortunately they had no other choice. When I heard the announcer seriously state that after 10 holes at +5 yesterday, Angel Cabrera was virtually in the lead by himself despite him being tied at the moment with Tiger Woods and a couple other lucky souls. How in the dickens could he be in the lead all alone if his score is tied with other players? He had played more holes than everyone else at +5 and therefore had a smaller chance of accumulating bogeys and doubles as the day went on.
That, my friend, is when I knew this course was for the birds. A course where players were essentially penalized for having more holes to play than the next man, and the greats do not sift through the rubble and play like champions but rather hang on for dear life and hoping, maybe, their six-over-par is the stark indication of the nation's best player.
Source: http://sports.yahoo.com/golf/pga/leaderboard/2007/24?sort=total_display
