Five thoughts about the U.S. Open

A year ago, the world watched as the USGA nearly killed a perfectly good golf course to make a point. This year, they decided to turn the gun on themselves.

But before we get to that, here are a couple of happier thoughts.

1. The golf course was absolutely perfect. Let me put this simply: the conditions at Oakmont were the best I’ve seen in 30 years of tromping around championship courses. Period. The mowing lines and presentation were unbelievable. The rough was just luscious, thick and upright. The bunkers were amazing. And whatever secret program John Zimmers and his team use to get nearly 100 percent Poa greens to remain that healthy through a regimen of 4x mowing (at .09”) and 2x rolling daily (plus handling 3” of rainfall) is pure magic.

2. Yes, the greens were uber-fast but that’s Oakmont. There was some Twitter debate about whether they were truly stimping at 15 Sunday afternoon, but it really doesn’t matter. They were exactly the right speed for the task, which was to identify the best players in the world. I heard the usual grumbling from some turfheads about crazy speeds creating crazy expectations. Frankly, I doubt the average club member will “demand” supers try to recreate those conditions. They’re (mostly) not that stupid. Plus, a good superintendent should view that kind of dumbass suggestion as an opportunity to educate golfers on the realities of creating Oakmont-style conditions.

3. The mass media coverage of the turf team was the best I remember. The preview stories on the now famous tree removal program should help many in our business succeed in selling the idea at their courses. Many reporters went out of their way to talk about why conditions at Oakmont were special and impossible to duplicate at nearly anyplace else. The volunteers and team were celebrated widely by big golf publications. This U.S. Open was another “win” for the image of the superintendent and wider understanding of good golf agronomy.

4. FOX sucked with one notable exception. What sucked? The commentators still spent way too much time yapping at each other on camera. They were constantly presenting tape-delayed coverage and pretending it was live. The silly computer-animated thingy that supposedly showed contours and directions on greens was distracting and gave me a headache. Their camera operators were never quite sure if they were supposed to follow the ball flight or if ShotTracker was doing it for them. On the bright side … Paul Azinger. I’ve always liked Zinger for telling it like it is and he delivered, particularly on Sunday.

5. Finally, the USGA is still run by lawyers. Only a bunch of lawyers could conclude that it was a good idea to abandon fairness for a misguided and mean-spirited sense of “rightness.” Only lawyers could decide that it was acceptable to impugn the honesty of players and observers on the shakiest of evidence. And only lawyers could say, “It’s more important to enforce the arcane letter of a rule instead of the spirit of the rule.” In a matter of a few hours, the egos of a handful of rules “experts” destroyed a decade of goodwill and image-building by the association. It was a brain fart of colossal proportions.

It was unfair to everyone, but it was perhaps most unfair to the members of Oakmont and the fabulous efforts of their staff and volunteers. Had this ended differently, it might have seriously jeopardized the long relationship between Oakmont and the USGA. As it is, I’m pretty sure that a few Oakmont members are shaking their heads right now and wondering, “Are we really going to let these people back on our course again in 2025?”

All that said, I’m probably going to shock you by urging you not to throw the USGA under the bus. The USGA does so many important things so well in our business. They’ve been extremely supportive of superintendents publicly and they really are committed to educating golfers about the importance of sound agronomy. They are well-intentioned folks who sincerely care about the future of the game and who value what turfheads do every day.

So what happens now? What could be changed to prevent stuff like this in future? I’m just one USGA member, but I’d vote that we start by following the very old-school guidance of a non-golfer named William Shakespeare who wrote, “First thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.”