While 11 players were busy in London securing their spots for the upcoming U.S. Open at the Olympic Club, one notable player announced he won’t be teeing it up in San Francisco.
A groin strain will prevent Darren Clarke, the defending British Open champion, from playing in the June 14-17 U.S. Open.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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The trophy was there, bright and gleaming. The trophy sitting on the tee of the ridiculously lengthened eighth hole at Olympic Club. The trophy and U.S. Open, thoughts about what is coming and what has gone.
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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.
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As the calendar creeps closer to 2012, the prep work for June’s U.S. Open at the Olympic Club ratchets up with each passing day.
And when it’s all said and done, spectators can expect to see a bigger and bolder event than the last time the Open came to The City in 1998.
“The Open has grown exponentially since ’98,” senior director of the U.S. Open Reg Jones said during a visit to Olympic on Monday. “Whether it’s media, spectator facilities ... there’s more space.”
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One wall of Phil Galvin’s courtside office on the sixth floor of the Olympic Club is covered with photos taken during visits to the venerable San Francisco athletic institution by former and current NBA legends.
The adjacent wall features photos of youth teams representing the OC during Galvin’s 17 years as basketball director.
Andre Campbell Jr. may some day grace both walls.
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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.
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