BlogU.S. Open Preview and Picks

The Buzz:

The big news is the weather and how 5 inches of rain has fallen on Merion since Friday.  The course is saturated since it’s not on sandy soil so there is a lot of wetness and it probably won’t get firm for the U.S. Open like USGA officials had hoped for.  Adding to the problem, more rain is going to fall on Wednesday and all day Thursday, with nice weather coming in Friday afternoon and for the weekend.

Will it be like Bethpage in 2009 is doubtful.  That is probably the worst weather week ever at the U.S. Open, it was so bad Thursday and Friday they were lucky to get things finished on Monday.  But it does look a lot like Congressional two years ago.  That was unfortunate for the USGA because they had no control on scoring and had record lows like Rory McIlroy’s 268 total.

This brings up an interesting question, how low will scoring go?  At 6,996 yards, Merion will be the shortest since Shinnecock in 2004 and could easily be the last U.S. Open course to be played under 7,000 yards. But with the rain Merion could be completely defenseless.  Lee Trevino talked about the playoff and how rain forced a delay on the back nine and how he loved the rain because it meant that his low drives would not run off the fairway and he could fly it to the flagstick on the soft greens and not have to bump in onto hard greens.  It will make for an interesting week.

A little bit about the history of Merion:

Course designed by Hugh Wilson in 1912.  After Wilson died in 1925, William Flynn came in and remodeled some of the holes.  In 1939 Perry Maxwell remodeled the greens.

The Merion Cricket Club was founded during the Civil War.  When golf became popular in 1896 the club purchased 100 acres of land and laid out nine holes.  Four years later a second nine was added, but in 1908 the course became obsolete with the Haskell rubber ball.  The club bought an abandoned farm in the town of Ardmore and in trying to find a designer, decided to have a committee of five members do the task.  Its chairman was Hugh Wilson, a Princeton graduate who had no training as an architect but after a trip to Britian came back with the traditions and strategies involved in building a course.

Wilson laid out the East Course first and it opened in 1912.  Two years later the West course, a shorter and appreciably easier course was opened.  Wilson was plagued with poor health throughout his life and died in 1925.  Until his death he constantly improved Merion and he was responsible for completing four holes at Pine Valley after its architect George Crump died.

Upon Wilson’s death the club hired the Toomey & Flynn company to complete the work that Wilson started.  Since then only minor changes have been made.

Merion is one of the shortest courses in modern history to hold the Open.  The course is tight and a player must show control and accuracy.  Many believe the heart of the course is its greens, which aren’t wildly contoured but with the proper speed and firmness gives Merion its bite.  Each green is also well protected with either bunkers, creeks or long grasses.

Finally, Merion is destinguished for its wicker baskets.  Wilson got the idea for using the wicker baskets instead of flags on the flagstick on his visit to England and Scotland.  Because of the strong winds frequently shredding flags, many clubs substituted lobster pots for the flags.  Towards the end of his trip he was impressed at the wicker basket used atop the flagsticks at Sunningdale Golf Club outside of London and adopted the idea for Merion.  For years the maintenance shop at Merion wove the baskets but today they are imported from Hong Kong.  70 years ago many other clubs used wicker baskets, clubs like Winged Foot and Greenbrier, but that practice was stopped decades ago.  In my 40 years of playing the game I only have run into one other course that use wicker baskets and I hate to say don’t remember the courses name.  It’s outside of Atlanta, Georgia and it was probably 20 years ago when I played it last so it’s possible that the club may not use the baskets anymore.

One last story that is sad.  There is a lot of different souvenirs that can be collected in golf, but one of the most covenant and expensive is a wicker basket flagstick.  Go on Ebay and they are going for thousands of dollars, I saw one auction for over $5,000.  I came close to ownership of one, I thought.  A good friend of mine, former USGA executive director Frank Hannigan had one.  It was given to him by the club after the 1981 U.S. Open and every time I’d go to his home would threaten to steal it.  On one of my last trips to his home he asked how badly I wanted it and how long would I wait and told him that I really wanted it bad and would wait.  He told me that he would write it into his will to give me the flagstick and for the last decade I thought that if I could outlive Hannigan would get it.  I asked him about “my” flagstick a few months ago are he related the story of when he moved out of his Califon home to his present location, the flagstick disappeared and has never been found.  Oh well, maybe I can win the lottery one day and buy my own wicker basket.

Championships held at Merion:

• 1904 Womens Amateur won by Georgianna M. Bishop
• 1909 Womens Amateur won by Dorothy I. Campbell
• 1916 U.S. Amateur won by Charles Evans
• 1924 U.S. Amateur won by Bobby Jones
• 1926 Womens Amateur won by Dorothy Campbell
• 1930 U.S. Open won by Bobby Jones
• 1934 U.S. Open won by Olin Dutra
• 1949 Womens Amateur won by Dorothy Germain
• 1950 U.S. Open won by Ben Hogan
• 1954 Curtis Cup won by the United States 6 to 3
• 1960 World Amateur Team Championship won by the United States
• 1966 U.S. Amateur won by Gary Cowan
• 1971 U.S. Open won by Lee Trevino
• 1981 U.S. Open won by David Graham
• 1989 U.S. Amateur won by Chris Patton
• 1998 U.S. Girls’ Junior won by Leigh Anne Hardin
• 2005 U.S. Amateur won by Edoardo Molinari
• 2009 Walker Cup won by USA

One last thing, only two other clubs in the Philadelphia area have held a U.S. Open.  One of them are easy, the Philadelphia Country Club who held the 1939 Open and it will be remember for the Open that Sam Snead made 8 on the last hole to miss out the playoff by a shot.  Byron Nelson went on to win.  The other club to hold the U.S. Open and not many realize it is the Philadelphia Cricket Club.  It was founded in 1854 and is the oldest country club in the United States.  It held the 1907 and then the 1910 Opens on it’s St. Martin’s course.  Today, this course has been reduced to a 9-hole layout and despite the reduction, the 7th, 8th, and 9th holes are the same layout as they were played during the 1907 and 1910 U.S. Open championship.

Here are some of the secrets of what it takes to play well at the U.S. Open:

Key stat for the winner:

Since 1960 only nine players have made the U.S. Open their first PGA Tour victory: Jack Nicklaus, 1962; Lee Trevino, 1968; Orville Moody, 1969; Jerry Pate, 1976; Ernie Els, 1993, Retief Goosen, 2001, Michael Campbell in 2005, Angel Cabrera in 2007 and Graeme McDowell in 2010.  But take a look at that list. Jack Nicklaus and Jerry Pate were U.S. Amateur champions, Retief Goosen and Ernie Els had almost a dozen wins around the world before they won the U.S. Open and Lee Trevino became one of the greatest players in the world.  Michael Campbell, Angel Cabrera and Graeme McDowell have won a lot around the world, especially in Europe. Of those you just have Orville Moody, who also won the Senior Open but still wasn’t that great of a player.  The point here is look for a big name to win the U.S. Open.

So could that open the door for another non-PGA Tour winner this week?  Some of the ones to look at are Jamie Donaldson, Branden Grace, Peter Hanson, Bio Kim, Matteo Manassero, Shawn Stefani but the player I feel will play the best and could be in contention is Hideki Matsuyama.  He is the Japanese player that as an amateur made the cut at the Masters in 2010 and 2011.  He just turned pro a couple of months ago and has been on a hot streak over in Japan.  I can see him contenting and be in it come Sunday.  Now other than Hanson and Manassero, the odds are long on the others, but just remember six years ago the odds were long on Cabrera and he won.

Three years ago the 40 year streak of not having a European Tour player winner was finally broken by Graeme McDowell.  Now the talent pool leans toward European players since seven of the top-17 in the world rankings are from Europe.  So the big question, can it be done again?  Lots of talent between the likes of Lee Westwood, Luke Donald, Rory McIlroy and Justin Rose.  And you can forget the 2010 champion Graeme McDowell.  Merion is a lot like Hilton Head, a course that McDowell won on two months again so I can see him repeating again.

Here are some more key stats to look to for this week:

The weather is always important at the U.S. Open. This week all the players will have to endure a lot of change, between rain early in the week to hot steamy conditions.  Most of all with wet fairways and greens it opens things up to a lot of different scenarios

Is there any rhyme or reason for a player winning the U.S. Open?

No

In the past 20 years its been won by grinders like Rory McIlroy, Jim Furyk, Retief Goosen, Angel Cabrera and Graeme McDowell, who may not look pretty but knows how to place shots in the right spots.  There have also been superstars like Tiger Woods, who were expected to win.  It’s been won by great tour players like Tom Kite and Corey Pavin, who capped off their PGA Tour careers with their first win in a major.  It’s been won by up and coming stars like South African’s Ernie Els and Retief Goosen and Australian Geoff Ogilvy, who won it in 2006. <P>

Who can forget the stars that many thought were past their prime, like Payne Stewart and Hale Irwin.  It’s also been won by tour grinders like Lee Janzen and Webb Simpson and last but not least the stray qualifier like Steve Jones, who surprised the golfing world with his victory in 1996, plus Michael Campbell in 2005, who was contemplating not going to U.S. Open qualifying the night before.  How about last 2009 winner Lucas Glover, you show me a person that had a winning Lucas Glover ticket and I will show you my winning Irish sweepstake ticket.  Now in past Opens we have said that it’s a wide open field.  But I feel that only the best will contend this week. It will be just like the Masters in which only a dozen players have a real chance at winning.

Last but not least, look at our stats of the U.S. Open.  The ones that are important to see are Fairways hit, Greens hit and putts.  Also look at this one of the winners of the last 22 U.S. Opens and there box scores.