Southern California's No. 1 Golf Source
 |
SITE
SEARCH
GOLF RESOURCE GUIDE:
2008 U.S. Open
|
||||
 It only makes sense. America’s national golf championship is being played at Torrey Pines Golf Course in San Diego, the first time since 1948 that a Southern California course has hosted the event. (Turn to page 52 to read about Ben Hogan’s victory at Riviera Country Club.) And it’s only the second non-resort public course that has ever hosted the championship, joining Bethpage Black, a New York course that served as the site in 2002. We grew up playing junior golf in Orange County, and never had much opportunity to take on the acclaimed South Course at Torrey Pines. That changed once we became members of the golf press in 1995 and lucked into annual media day invites for Junior World and the Buick Invitational. We’ve since come to know and love the layout, especially after the course was renovated by Rees Jones a few years ago. (Read more about that on page 42.) But nothing prepared us for what we encountered last month when we were invited to take part in the media day for the U.S. Open. Take it from us: If you haven’t played the course recently, you haven’t played the course where the best players in the game will test their skills when the Open takes place June 12-15. Indeed, the pros will be seeing a much different course than what they’re used to seeing every February when the Buick rolls around. The United States Golf Association, which runs the Open, said its goal was to provide competitors with a stern test of golf. Mission accomplished. The course treated us like a couple of school kids in the principal’s office, and firmly smacked us on the backside — repeatedly — with a wooden paddle. The rough surrounding the fairways dished out the most punishment. We’d never experienced anything like it. Hit your ball a few feet off the fairway and it vanished out of sight, sucked into a 4-inch deep forest of kikuya. Swinging through this stuff was like swinging through a patch of seaweed under water. The length of the golf course provides another penalizing factor. At 7,643 yards, Torrey Pines will be the longest course in U.S. Open history. We didn’t play from that distance, but it sure felt like it afer hitting 3 woods into some of the par 3s and par 4s. Everything we’d ever heard about how tough a U.S. Open course is set up proved true. And this was four weeks before the championship. The rough will only be more trecherous, the greens and fairways even faster. We walked away with a newfound appreciation for the professionals who play the U.S. Open each year. We always knew they were good. But we had no idea how good they were: anyone who shoots in the 70s on this golf course is superhuman in our eyes. But as much as the course reminded us of our golf frailties, it also inspired us. There is something intangible about playing a course that is set up to test every physical and mental part of your game. Yes, we ended up bruised and battered. But we’d never had so much fun getting beat up. SG |
||||
RSS SubscribeReaders Feedback:
Hey, good to find someone who argees with me. GMTA.
| Comment at 7/17/2011 |
AwmTLN , [url=http://yascbngiphyx.com/]yascbngiphyx[/url], [link=http://uiljcukjnuzt.com/]uiljcukjnuzt[/link], http://ebugkrauizvh.com/
| Comment at 7/18/2011 |
bn3FCT , [url=http://ekcpgnluvpct.com/]ekcpgnluvpct[/url], [link=http://tkjyssojvqrd.com/]tkjyssojvqrd[/link], http://sqkbupwqffps.com/
| Comment at 7/22/2011 |
