We find ourselves at the halfway point in the 117th running of the United States Open Golf Championship at Erin Hills Golf Course outside Milwaukee. The United States Golf Association runs our National Open and the tournament travels to different sites from year to year with the express purpose of having various parts of the country get the Open experience.
Three of golf’s four majors rotate their championship sites from year to year. The longest running tournament of them all, the British Open, has historically been played at five courses in Scotland and four courses in England. St. Andrews gets to host the Open Championship every five years, so the other eight venues normally have the tourney coming their way once each decade. The PGA Championship has taken a more haphazard approach and often it seemed as if the host course had a connection to whoever was the president of the PGA of America at that time. A total of 55 courses have hosted the PGA just one time since the event first began in 1916.
For the longest of time, the United States Open visited venerable, old-style and traditional courses from the golden age of American golf architecture. The National Open has been contested nine times at Oakmont, seven times at Baltusrol, six times at Oakland Hills and five times at Merion, The Olympic Club, Shinnecock Hills, Winged Foot and Pebble Beach. For the longest of time, the USGA, which is headquartered in Far Hills, New Jersey, just outside New York City, was accused of having an East Coast bias. During the past 117 years, the U.S. Open has been played 58 times on courses in New England, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Maryland. Of course, a great many of the great old courses were built in the east.
Yet since the turn of this century, the USGA has gone out of its way to bring its national championship to different courses in different parts of the country. There also has been an emphasis upon playing at venues that are open to the public. Since 2002, the National Open has visited Bethpage State Park on Long Island on two occasions, Torrey Pines in San Diego, Chambers Bay in Tacoma, and now Erin Hills in Milwaukee. Up until going to Bethpage in 2002, the Open had been played at only two different open-to-the-public courses during the first 101 years of its existence. However, I use that phrase “open to the public” quite loosely in this regard. The two public courses with a U.S. Open pedigree were Pebble Beach and Pinehurst. Both are resort courses and while they are not exclusive like private country clubs, we are talking about five-star resorts with green fees ranging from $500-$600 and hotel rooms well into four figures for the daily rate.
Of course, the movement toward more public access courses and new sites on the United States Open rotation doesn’t mean that this is a newfound trend. After all, the Open was contested at Congressional in 2011, The Olympic Club in 2012, Merion in 2013 and Oakmont last year. The great courses of the golden era will always have a place on the Open calendar, perhaps just not as often as before. All of them are private and very exclusive.
Future Opens are scheduled for Shinnecock Hills next year, Winged Foot in 2020, The Country Club in 2022, and Oakmont in 2025. Other U.S. Open venues include a returns to Pebble Beach in 2019 for its 100th anniversary, Torrey Pines in 2021, and Pinehurst in 2024. The next time the Open is hosted by a newbie golf course will be in 2023 when the tourney is played at Los Angeles Country Club. Although LACC has never hosted our national championship, it fits the mold of the great courses of the past. It first opened in 1897, was designed by George Thomas (Riviera, Saticoy, Bel-Air, and Stanford), and hosted various editions of the Los Angeles Open in the 1920s through the 1940s. It too is ultra-exclusive.
Part of the overall plan of the USGA is to visit different parts of the country when it comes to determining the various sites. While Chambers Bay in 2015 might have been somewhat of a stretch because of the immaturity of the course, the USGA has learned to like the idea of a west coast Open because of the time difference on the east coast. When Tiger won in overtime at Torrey Pines in San Diego in 2008, television ratings went through the roof and the Open coverage drew great numbers during Saturday and Sunday evening prime time. Going to Chambers Bay, Pebble Beach, Torrey Pines, The Olympic Club and LACC means the 7 p.m. finish on Saturday and Sunday evening is played out at 10 p.m. in the eastern time zone.
The biggest issue with going to new venues deals with the newness of the course and its lack of familiarity to the top professionals of the game. This past week has featured a great deal of commentary about the 3-foot high fescue rough at Erin Hills. If you are familiar with great golf courses in the upper Midwest, then knee-high fescue is nothing new. Highly ranked courses such as Arcadia Bluff in Michigan or Idlewild in Wisconsin’s Door County are framed by knee-high fescue that makes for a scenic framing of each golf hole and normally the fairways at these types of courses are wide enough to land a commercial airliner. Newness is the principal issue with Erin Hills. At a traditional course such as Oakmont, one doesn’t have to explain its furrowed fairway bunkers since we have been familiar with them since the Pittsburgh-area course first hosted the Open in 1927. Erin Hills has a totally different look from other U.S. Open sites. Then again, so does Oakmont and Pebble Beach and Torrey Pines.
Of course, in the end a great National Open is based on the quality of the champion and the closeness of the contest. Justin Rose’s win at Merion in 2013 was memorable because of his razor-thin victory over runner-ups Jason Day and Phil Mickelson. Two years earlier, Rory McIlroy ran away with an eight-stroke victory at Congressional, which is better remembered for the softness of the course from heavy rains than for McIlroy’s dynamic 16-under-par performance.
It’s the weekend of the 117th playing of the U.S. Open Golf Championship at Erin Hills, an 11-year-old course with zero pedigree. The caliber of the champion and the tightness of a dynamic leader board may result in a return to Milwaukee some 15 years from now. Then again, it could be a one-time wonder that never hosts the Open again. Only time will tell.
