It was very disappointing to see a Major championship develop into the kind of farce we witnessed at the US Open in Shinnecock Hills.
Although the powers that be came up with many different reasons why the par three 7th turned into the hole from hell, somebody should have pointed out that the US GA had had five years to sort out the problem.
A little bit of work on the green and its design would have alleviated all the problems and prevented 5,000 New Yorkers turn up at one hole to watch world class professionals embarrass themselves.
The green was unplayable and the US GA admitted as much by suspending play for 10 minutes while they worked out what to do about it. They settled for spraying it with water, but it was a case of too little too late.
They have always said that they seek not to embarrass the world’s best, merely identify them, but this was unacceptable. They want to get as close to the edge as they can, but this time they went too far.
I met up with the R & A’s Peter Dawson in BA’s lounge on the way back and my exact words to him were: ‘I bet you can’t make as big a balls up of our Open as they have theirs’.
The last day was perfectly summed up by what happened to Lee Westwood, He shot what he described as the best 79 of his life and actually moved 8 places up the field. When half the players struggle to break 80 and former champion Ernie Els in the last match can’t, then something is wrong. Heaven knows what the scoring would have been like had the wind been any stronger than 15mph.
Maybe they ran the tournament to find the most phlegmatic champion they could because that’s exactly what they got. Retief Goosen, great champion that he is, was totally unflappable.
While Darren Clarke would have been very disappointed to miss the cut, I feel this could be the turning point of Lee Westwood’s season. Aston Villa manager David O’Leary had been our guest for the week and I handed team talk responsibilities to him 10 minutes before tee off time on Thursday. He just told him to forget about his troublesome wrist and to get out there and just try his hardest. It seemed to work.
Elsewhere, it was a shame that Simon Dyson got himself into contention on the final day in the Aa St Omer Open, but couldn’t quite finish the job off. The Yorkshireman has obviously turned the corner, however. Similarly, Stephen Brown will have taken much from his French experience after spending three days close to the top of the leader board.
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