For all the negative comments surrounding this years Open I thought I would give kudos to the USGA for pulling off the tournament at all given the nightmare that was the weather this year. I think that very few people realize the magnitude of a tournament like the US Open, change one little thing and 27 other seemingly unrelated things go haywire. I didn't like the confusion of different rounds being played on the same day but I think the tv networks are more to blame than the USGA.

so anyway, to the USGA, thanks for putting the US Open together in the toughest of conditions.

I'd rather thank the volunteers who made it possible for the course to be playable, not the USGA.

The only thing the USGA is responsible for is taking the skill out of the game by not allowing lift, clean, and place, and setting up a non-dramatic 18th hole.

Cheers to the volunteers and the unsung heroes that maintain courses.

Thank the USGA? I'll have to think about that one.

Oh save it. TripleBogey said it best...the volunteers deserve a round of applause, but the Open sucked. Look, I know I am going to get flamed because I am leaving a bunch of negative comments, but the OPEN is OUR TOURNAMENT, and as a member of the USGA, it sucks to think the tournament did not allow the best and most skilled golf to be played.

Someone said in another thread that Tiger, Phil, and other notables didnt take advantage early...well I disagree. Instead, the tournament should have been set up differently. It wasnt equal. It was a rat race on Friday to play as many holes as they could, and to the benefit of the guys actually playing, and to the chagrin of the guys in their hotel rooms.

Major Championship venues need to have higher requirements for course condition/maintenance under extreme weather circumstances.

TPC Sawgrass could be hit with 10 inches of rain, and have the greens rolling at a 14 within an hour of rain stoppage. I think the systems TPC installed should be a requirement at all future major venues, and partially funded by the USGA.

How would YOU have done it differently?

I think a lot of people are upset because they did not get the winner the wanted...Mickelson. He wins, this whole week is recreated into stories of legends.

I will agree with this statement. This US Open will definitely not be remembered for any good reasons though.

I'm just kinda bummed I didn't see this course play how it was supposed to. US Open = rock hard greens that roll like laminate flooring. I got to see 3 and 4 irons take a hop and stop and sometimes even spin back an inch or two. That bothered me more than anything since we've been so accustomed to that kind of play for the past 10 years.

Good point.

There is NO way that Tiger, Phil and the other top players would be trailing Barnes had the weather scheduling been handled better IMO.

Of course there is always going to be some "rub of the green", Duval took the worst of it with that bunker plug, but it was REALLY two completely different golf courses due to the poor decisions made early.

Again, just my opinion. And I can completely understand the opposing point of view that the "two different courses" is just the way the ball bounces sometimes.

At the end of the day however, it was not very good golf viewing to watch Barnes just chop it around in the final group, and see a guy go 3-over and still win by two. IMO the ONLY way a guy with Barnes' game gets in the final group is if there is some crazy weather situation like the one that we saw, where he is playing a completely different course than the others.

I was pulling for Duval or Phil.

Tim

Bingo!

Those idots at the USGA had no part of getting the course ready,only being sticklers to rules that affected the outcome of the tournament in the end.

Did you hear Duval in the presser? He said he had numerous "mud balls" and one went 60 yards off line from the fairway.He said ther eis nothing he can do about that,but if they were playing LCP those issues wouldnt arise.

Same thing with Barnes,he said he couldn't tell if it was his swing or the mud balls he had so many on the front side and they were flying all over the place.

Im sick of "David B. Fay" and his goons that try to "preserve the integrity of the game" (oh please)while at the same time making luck a huge factor in the biggest tournament of the year.

I do agree that lift, clean and place would have made for a more consistent reward for hitting the fairways. But realistically, how was the weather for this tournament any less fair than the wind conditions in an Open Championship? The British is known for lower scores in the am when the wind is down and gets tougher in the pm as the breezes pick up. Is that unfair? Golf is played outside and conditions are always changing, in fact it could be said that you never play the same golf course twice.


Everything else aside, whether you agree with their decisions or not, from an event planning standpoint pulling this tournament off in these conditions was huge. That's all I'm trying to say...

These comparisons to the British Open come up when in fact rarely do you see such a huge difference in conditions at the British Open affecting a large part of the field compared to the disaster at this year's US Open. The courses in the U.K. by and large can stand up to wet weather a lot more than Bethpage. By your logic of more wind in the A.M., seems pretty fair to me. Thursday and Friday the field swaps tee times so they both get the brunt of any PM wind.

I highly doubt Turnberry next month runs into as much of a mess as Bethpage did.

Except when the wind doesn't blow one of the afternoons. Then one group gets an advantage. I seem to recall the one year where Woods shot an 82 in the Open Championship where the morning players had nearly perfect conditions, and in the afternoon you had KJ Choi or Shigeki Maruyama crouching behind a sign to get some shelter from the weather. It happens.
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Do you really want lift, clean and cheat to show up at a major? Mickelson himself has said that players will try anything they can in order to be able to put their hands on the ball, because no matter what when they are done the ball is sitting in a better position. What about the balls that don't collect mud, just fall in a poor lie? If L,C & C is implemented, I guarantee those shots become much easier once the player puts the ball back.

I'm not sure what tournament you saw this week, but I saw the "greatest putter ever" miss many 5-10 footers that he once used to make. I believe on the 2002 Open video Dan Hicks refers to him as "the most resilient player the game has ever known." Why is he unable to overcome this then?

Rub of the green. Everyone played under the same conditions. Some shots that were short of the green popped out, and some stuck in the rough. A wind gust came up halfway through one guy's shot that didn't come up durnig another's.

When you smoke one down the middle 300,have 170 left and miss the green by 30 yards because of mud on the ball it is not fair......period.Don't they play LCP in EVERY other tournament when needed?? Of course they do.Its only the prim and proper USGA who feels the need to have these dumb setups and rulings every single year "because they can".

Even when you do stripe it and end up in a sand filled divot (about .000001% of the time BTW)_you can still dig it out and get it on the green and have an idea of where it is going.That happens mabe once every 4 rounds...so what.Not the case when you have a giant clump of mud on the ball...numerous times during ONE round..What would you say the percentage of mud balls was?? 15% 20%..Higher? That is a MASSIVE difference over hitting it in a divot once every who knows how many drives.

This is the FAIRWAY remember now where you are SUPPOSED to have a great lie....especially with the carpet these guys play on in 2009.You aren't improving the lie at all if you are in the FAIRWAY.Its called rewarding good shots,something I thought the USGA wanted.You are penalizing good shots.....with luck no less.

Was anyone confused by the 18th hole being a 354 yard, non driveable par 4? Not the most dramatic finishing hole although the pin location was in an interesting position.

Who is in charge of scheduling the weather anyway?

You don't recall it very well. You highlighted what I wrote about Thursday/Friday tee times and then you cite not only one of the biggest anomalies in weather in Open History, but fail to remember that weather was on SATURDAY. Woods shot 81, guess what the co-leader after round two who won the Open that year shot in the same weather? Els shot 72. Tiger must of had a dozen lip outs Thurs/Fri, so he could have still won with the 81, or maybe he should have shot 76? 77? And the crouching Shigeki? He shot 75. While the weather was pretty rough, the ball was not blowing off the greens, so play did not need to be halted. Let's see a course in Northeast survive that.

I don't have a problem with the Saturday morning players getting better conditions. If you ask the leaders after day two would they rather be in the lead with some wind, or 10 strokes back with the sweet tee time, what do you think they would choose?

The problem I have with the USGA is they knew early Thursday the day would be a wash, they did not have to get 5 holes in for some of the groups? Why? There was going to be a Monday finish, so keep the tournament consistent and tee off Friday for R1. By only focusing on getting play going no matter what, they ended up with lopsided conditions for groups. That was avoidable. I am not going to say it is unfair, but it does take away from the tournament. It doesn't matter who was in those groups. People are whining over what it did to Tiger, but he had a chance, just like at Muirfield. If he knew how to adjust his chips/pitches for the wet/thick grass when the ball is sitting up and he putts better, he probably wins.

And let's not confuse the issue. I am not advocating nor do I need to see L, C and P. The course was wet, mud happens, deal with it.

The USGA deserves every bit of criticism they got, if only for the debacle that was Thursday rainchecks. They only about-faced and did the right thing because of the public criticism and pressure from the AG's office.

I think the USGA and the grounds crews did a fantastic job with what was given to them. I think the USGA made the correct call with L/C/P as well. It's the most coveted major we have and allowing the best players in the world to basically tee it up in the fairway would be a smudge on the tournament, IMO. It's the U.S. Open, not the Buick Open. Play it down!

The USGA is in charge of trying to jam a few holes in, at the expense of the groups unlucky enough to be in that slot, when it is perfectly clear to everyone that the rain will not allow them to play for more than a few minutes.

Just a LITTLE bit of common sense would have gone a long way at this tournament. Unfortunately, the USGA didn't use much.

All you have to do is ask a few of the tour players, off the record and with no media types around, what THEY felt about how it was handled. Just about anyone could have done a better job of managing the starts and restarts during the downpours.

Tim

I bet the USGA was really bummed about losing control of the course, probably some were on suicide watch. I'm afraid they got stung by east coast weather, they put so much into the tournament these days they might think twice about these locations.

Television will always have a say in if and how much golf will be played. I learned this first hand at the last World Series. Weather patterns can and will destroy the flow and fairness of tournaments particularly in the Northeast at traditional courses. Wait till the USGA gets its hands on Merion.