Lynch: Make the U.S. Open great again — tighten the thumbscrews like the old days

USA Today

2 days ago

Lynch: Make the U.S. Open great again — tighten the thumbscrews like the old days
OAKMONT, Pa. — Moments of levity can be hard to find at major championships, so kudos to whomever assigned Phil Mickelson a parking spot at Oakmont Country Club in a row occupied exclusively by winners of the U.S. Open, one equipped with an electric vehicle charging station for the employee of oil merchants. The berth for his courtesy Lexus is also nearest the exit, appropriate since this might be the final Open appearance of the six-time silver medalist, whose eligibility expires this year.
If it is to be Mickelson's farewell, it will all feel familiar to him. After two consecutive years at courses that, while worthy, were decidedly non-traditional venues, the 125th Open promises to harken back to a glorious era when even the winner was bloodied and spitting teeth at the end. Major venues don't come any meaner than Oakmont, which Gene Sarazen once said possessed all the charm of a sock to the head (that from a man who won the 1923 PGA Championship here).
At most Opens — on either side of the Atlantic — patience is often the first faculty to fail, worn thin by a series of well-executed shots getting lousy results. At Oakmont, that frustration is creeping in far ahead of the first ball getting airborne at 6:45 a.m. on Thursday. Practice rounds are moving at a pace more glacial than LIV's "grow the game" efforts, with nine holes taking over three hours as competitors invest time hitting shots they don't anticipate most weeks but can count upon here — chipping from thick greenside rough, or wedges from lay-up areas short of the greens. The scouting missions are suboptimal too, since course conditions are uncomfortably removed from what players will see at the business end of the week, thanks to a Sunday deluge that capped one of Pittsburgh's wettest months in years, and left Oakmont much softer now than it will be. And to top it all, whatever institutional knowledge of the course some guys had from 2016 or 2007 has been largely erased with the restoration by Gil Hanse, particularly on the green complexes.
Only Oakmont's reputation for difficulty — richly deserved — remains as it was. Which hopefully means that the USGA's course set-up team has dusted off the thumbscrews it hasn't deployed since 2018 at Shinnecock Hills, when Brooks Koepka was the last champion with an over-par total.
My friend Chick Wagner has been a member of Oakmont since 1978. He remembers little about the three times he won the club championship, but has forensic recall of the seven times he finished second. He argues it's the most balanced of America's great courses, explained thus: long holes play downhill, short holes uphill; six holes run east to west, six north to south, four southwest to northeast and two northwest to southeast, so no wind direction is particularly advantageous; each nine has a single par 5 and two par 3s, one of which is long and one short; five greens slope away from the line of play. It's a compelling argument, but makes Oakmont sound awfully benign. One can't use the same terminology to describe Julia Child and Jeffrey Dahmer just because both liked to cook.
Along with Seminole, Oakmont is the rare club that has managed to have its ethos summarized on a pithy T-shirt sold in the pro shop. At Seminole, the emphasis is on pace: 'Play well, play fast. Play poorly, play faster.' At Oakmont, it's all about difficulty. Unapologetically so. The shop sells a shirt bearing a quote from W.C. Fownes, the son of Oakmont's founder and designer. 'Let the clumsy, the spineless, the alibi artist stand aside,' he said.
That's as distilled an essence of Oakmont as is possible, one reflected in the flintiness of those who win here, like Hogan and Nicklaus and Miller and Nelson and Els. There's a reason eight of the nine previous U.S. Open champions here won multiple major titles.
Fownes' quote continues, and amounts to a distillation of what this Oakmont Open promises to be. 'When you are selecting the Open champion of the United States, the most prized golfing title in the world, why not put the highest premium on the title?'
For most of its history, the USGA did just that with its signature championship, presenting an examination so thorough as to be excruciating. Then it seemed the organization took its foot off the throat, the institutional appetite for pushing a course to the edge diminished with a green lost at Shinnecock Hills or a fairway lost at Chambers Bay. The USGA's desire to risk the ire of players shrank.
But Oakmont need not be pushed to the limit of fairness to present a stern test. All it needs is a little fertilizer in the rough. Even the most ardent whiners in the locker room can't actually point to anything this week as being fundamentally unfair, which means they are reduced to the losing proposition that Fownes' premium is too high. Even in this era of shamelessness, none would be willing to die on that hill.
The most sober set-up men in golf look ready to give fans what they need, both practically and philosophically. Which is a reminder that being entertained doesn't require birdies by the bushel load, and that not everything in this game is organized solely around the desire to please players. This is a week to tighten the thumbscrews. Achtung, baby.