About the only buzz at the US Open is the hum of trains that dump fans by the hundreds near the first tee at Olympia Fields Country Club. On the eve of the year’s second major championship, this sleepy Chicago suburb seems sleepier than ever, even while it’s full of the world’s best golfers.
The course is nondescript, Tiger Woods isn’t going for a Grand Slam and the Mike Weir excitement level hasn’t gone up despite his new green jacket. No one has yelled ”Waggle Boy” at Sergio Garcia yet, Annika Sorenstam is nowhere to be seen, and everyone just wants to plod along and make pars.
”You want to be the most boring golfer around this week,” Padraig Harrington said.
That might not be a bad goal for a major championship that penalises errant drives with thick rough and forces players to navigate devilishly tricky greens. What fans could end up with, though, is four days of watching missed 6-footers for par on a golf course where it’s hard to pick out a memorable hole.
The US Golf Association wants to identify the best player over four days, but for the first part of the week players were just trying to identify a course that few of them had heard of and even fewer had seen before it was selected to host a US Open.
The last time Olympia Fields held an Open, Gene Sarazen was still a few years away from inventing the sand wedge. Seventy-five years later, it’s got another one but doesn’t seem to know just what to do with it.
The 247-yard 17th hole is a monster, but the rest of the course seems merely to be an assemblage of long par-4s. There’s no par-5s on the back nine, little in the way of risk-and-reward and the constant sound of train whistles blowing.
Players have declared the course tough enough, even though it plays relatively short at 7 190 yards and par-70. But they’re mostly at a loss when comparing it to US Open layouts of the past.
”It’s different,” Woods said diplomatically.
It’s certainly different than last year when raucous crowds jammed Bethpage Black in a celebration of everything that public golf and New York City can offer. Tens of thousands cheered Woods on, talked to every player who came by and generally enjoyed a love-in with the game.
A middle-aged fan leaped in the air in excitement after getting Woods’s autograph off the practice green on Wednesday, but the suburban Chicago crowd seems a lot more subdued at this Open.
The crowds aren’t the only difference. Olympia Fields is lush and green, but aside from a clock tower over the clubhouse and the trains it lacks defining features. This isn’t an Open set amid the natural beauty of a Pebble Beach or battled over the treacherous sloping greens of Pinehurst No. 2.
”You can’t say that anything stacks up to Pebble Beach. It’s one of the most beautiful places in all of golf,” Woods said. ”And we do play some very historic venues. Last year was completely different.”
Here, commuter trains run alongside a course that’s not even considered the best in Chicago. That honor goes to Medinah Country Club, where Woods and Garcia duelled in the 1999 PGA Championship.
The trains may bother some players, but to Kenny Perry they have a calming effect.
”It reminds me of home,” said Perry, who is from Kentucky. ”We have tracks that run not far from my house. When I hear it like we’re hearing it right now, it immediately reminds me of my home.
”I’ve always enjoyed the trains. It’s always settled me down. Now, other guys may not like it.”
Jeff Sluman lives nearby, but even he said he hadn’t played the course in years. A small survey of players on their favorite course in the Chicago area brought up names like Medinah, Cog Hill and the Chicago Golf Club, but not Olympia Fields.
Still, it will be set up to brutal US Open conditions and that will give it a familiar look to most players.
”If you look at it, it’s a classical golf course,” Ernie Els said. ”So basically it’s exactly the same as any other US Open.
They normally get a nice, old traditional golf course for us to play on and set it up really difficult.”
One thing that might have heightened the level of excitement this week was Woods being in contention for the second leg of a Grand Slam. But Woods played poorly at the Masters, and, after being winless in his last three majors, is beginning to hear questions about a possible slump.
Weir, meanwhile, hears questions more like Woods is used to getting. Does he have the stuff to win a second major in a row, even though he has struggled since the Masters?
”I feel there’s a possibility I could do it,” Weir said. ”Things have to fall all into place, and the stars have to line up. But you never rule anything out.”
No you don’t. And that means this Open may be a memorable one
yet. – Sapa-AP