Golf: Bill Elliott
JUST a few kilometres from the Congressional Country Club, venue for the United States Open which started on Thursday, America’s most famous golfer sits and wonders about the state of his game once he is fully recovered from injury. For Bill Clinton these are worrying times. While the president frets over the leg he injured while visiting his pal Greg Norman, America’s other quite famous golfer has much less to concern him.
For Tiger Woods, his personal fortune now guaranteed to be not less than $100-million over the next few years, these are heady times. Maybe, given the twists and turns of a sportsman’s life – after all it is not only heads of state who trip up in the wee, small hours – they will never be headier.
Not since Jack Nicklaus was in his tubby prime has a current Masters champion approached the year’s second major with so many critics spouting positively about his chances of achieving the Grand Slam of the four majors.
No one has ever achieved this mother of all sporting feats, but, with Woods, even the most cynical of observers tend to feel that here just might be the young man to pull four rabbits out of the hat. It is, however, unlikely. Asking a golfer to win the Grand Slam is close to requiring a horse to win at Cheltenham, Aintree and Epsom prior to lifting the singles trophy at Wimbledon and before proving himself an accomplished after-dinner speaker.
It is, surely, simply not on. Woods, possibly more than anyone before him, is talented enough, but can anyone be that lucky. So if not Tiger, who will win? Here it is worth first considering the course itself. Situated just outside Washington, the Congressional was opened in 1924 by President Calvin Coolidge and has played host to every golf-loving American leader since. Rumour has it that Marilyn Monroe caddied there once, but this, as they say, is another story.
Because this is the US Open and because the United States Golf Association takes it as a personal affront each time a player breaks par in their championship, the Congressional will be mown tighter than a percussionist’s base drum, with narrow landing areas and rough graded from the merely difficult to the widely impossible.
Accuracy off the tee will be more important than length, and finesse rather than raw courage will be the next requirement as players tackle heavily sloped and barricaded greens. And for the first time since 1909, the US Open will finish with a par three, a 190m blow across water to a heavily guarded green the size of a few dollar bills. This was Rees Jones’s idea.
Jones is the architect who acts as something of a firefighter to the USGA, tinkering with Open courses the way Machiavelli might have considered spiking the drinks. Apart from tinkering with it, Jones also has moved this short hole, figuratively at least, from its more usual 10th place in the batting order to 18th.
His big move has been to steepen the bank in front of the green so that any shots landing there will roll back into the water. Most of the players have raised a glass to him already, although whether they fancied draining it in his honour or throwing it at him is not yet clear.
Unless the leader comes to this hole in Sunday’s final round with at least a three- shot lead, his legs will be trembling. No one, especially if the wind gets up, will be safe.
Among the usual suspects set to assemble as contenders on this final day I suggest Davis Love and Nick Price are the most likely to upset Tiger’s week. Last year, Love shredded his chance of a US Open when he three-putted from 4,5m at the last. This hurt badly, but the tall, elegant American is now restored to his best form and, at 33, he surely has all the ammunition it takes to win a major as brutal as this one. My personal favourite.
Close behind is Price. Already a two-major winner – the Open and the US PGA in 1994 – the Zimbabwean admits now he risked burn- out as he chased a fortune following these victories. He, too, is back on track, winning on the US Tour in April and twice in South Africa earlier in the year. At his best, Price is as good as anyone.
At least the winner will not have to endure the pain suffered by the last man to win a US Open at Congressional. In 1964, Ken Venturi, now a television analyst with CBS, only just survived in the 115-degree heat on the final day, playing his last half dozen holes in a trance, a doctor close by as the golfer all but keeled over.
It was because of Venturi’s ordeal that the USGA scrapped their then tradition of playing the last 36 holes in one day. Mind you, if Tiger wins this time, the blazered custodians of American golf may well consider scrapping the first three rounds as well, for as long as The Kid remains in good shape.