Since the United States Golf Association began its preparation for June’s U.S. Open at the Olympic Club, it has touted the first six holes of the Lake Course as the most difficult in Open history.
On Thursday, NBC golf analyst and winner of the 1973 U.S. Open Johnny Miller took it even a step further.
Read More
Two-time U.S. Open champion Ernie Els is among 24 players who have earned full exemptions for next month’s U.S. Open at the Olympic Club in San Francisco via the world rankings, the United States Golf Association said Wednesday.
The South African Els, who won the year’s second major in 1994 and 1997, gained a spot by virtue of being ranked in the top 60 through Monday.
Els, a former world No. 1, is currently ranked 44th.
Read More
The U.S. Open places a premium on emotion and psychology. “A lot of players,” said four-time Open champion Jack Nicklaus, “are eliminated the moment the tournament starts.” Nicklaus, certainly, wasn’t in that category. Neither were Lee Janzen or the late Payne Stewart.
Read More
Six weeks now. Six weeks until America’s golfing championship returns to that place known as the Graveyard of Legends, San Francisco’s Olympic Club, where the chill settles, the fog swirls and expectations end up buried like a ball in the thick rough.
Olympic, alongside the Great Highway, a couple hundred yards from the Pacific Ocean, where the first hole runs atop the San Andreas fault and the last hole has a green fronted by bunkers that look very much like the letters I-O-U.
Read More
More than 9,000 golfers have thrown their hat into the ring to try and qualify for June’s U.S. Open at the Olympic Club.The 9,006 entrants is the fourth-highest in U.S. Open history, just 80 shy of the record number accepted for the 2009 championship in New York.“It is always gratifying to see how many golfers, from across the world, are interested in playing in the national Open championship,” USGA Executive Director Mike Davis said.
Read More
The Olympic Club’s Lake Course might seem short by typical USGA standards, but changes implemented for June’s U.S. Open promise to baffle some of the world’s finest golfers.
Although the course hosted the Open in 1955, ’66, ’87 and ’98, modern golfers are driving the ball further and further, so 357 yards were added since the last time the Open was in The City to ensure the event is the most rigorous tournament of the year.
Read More
This Open is closed, shut tight, impenetrably by the new genius of a golfer, Rory McIlroy. Record numbers, remarkable play. And now the focus shifts to the West, to San Francisco, to the Olympic Club, where America’s golfing championship will be on display next year.
We thought what Tiger Woods did at Pebble Beach in the 2000 U.S. Open was unapproachable — 12-under par and a 15-shot margin. But this weekend, McIlroy not only approached, he obliterated.
Read More
What do you think Tiger Woods was doing Thursday? Possibly watching the U.S. Open as many others were, knowing he should have been playing, and would have been playing, were it not for that knee injury?
Was he sprawled on the couch, grabbing a potato chip or a Gatorade when he might have been grabbing a wedge?
Or was he a avoiding the telecast from Congressional Country Club in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., trying to escape another reminder of his situation?
Read More
→ Follow Nate Beeler on Twitter
→ Nate Beeler's Editorial Cartoons on Facebook
→
Read More
In the mind’s eye, there’s Payne Stewart standing in disbelief on the severely sloped 18th green at San Francisco’s Olympic Club, his 8-foot birdie putt attempt rolling 25 feet below the hole. Ah yes, the U.S. Open, agony and very little ecstasy.
That was then — and might be again next year when the Open returns to Olympic — but this is now, the 2011 Open at Congressional Country Club in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. The bewilderment and suffering are much the same.
Read More
URL: http://www.sfexaminer.com/taxonomy/term/3900?page=1
