Something ails the U.S. Open
The U.S. Open is my favorite golf tournament, and Father’s Day annually is one of my favorite sports days of the year. The final round always seems to be filled with drama.
But something is wrong with the Open, and I’m not talking about the rain, which has stretched out this Open like the NBA playoffs.
Why are unaccomplished golfers excelling in the Open? It’s not just Ricky Barnes and Lucas Glover, two relative unknowns. It’s happened frequently in the past, guys who have never won much of anything rise to the top and sometimes win.
Barnes, for instance, never has so much as finished in the top 10 of a PGA Tour event. Is it possible that the layout of Open courses results in dumb luck? Possible that the generally-tough layouts result in a crapshoot, in which talent is negated?
I don’t know. I just know that watching the likes of Ricky Barnes and Lucas Glover is not what made the final day of the U.S. Open one of the best days in sport.
-------------Berry Tramel can be heard Monday through Friday from 4:40-5:20 p.m. on The Sports Animal radio network, including AM-640 and FM-98.1. You can e-mail him here and follow him on Twitter @BerryTramel. Visit Berry's website here.
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Yes, it’s mostly dumb luck. Most of the guys who shot the better scores didn’t lift a club on Thursday during that horrendous weather.
But here’s a question. For the Super Bowl, wouldn’t it be insane to widen the field another 25 yards and lengthen it by another 50? And the World Series–ditto for moving the fences back 100 feet? So if it’s insane to toughen the playing fields for elite events in other sports, why does the U.S. Open make their courses a House of Horrors, where the best players in the world barely eek out par? Speaking just for me, I don’t want to watch the world’s best hack out a 72 on a course you and I wouldn’t be able to break 120 playing on. Now granted, this year the rain made everything even worse, but come on: Leave the courses alone and let the story be between the best golfers in the world going head-to-head–instead of the #500 ranked player in the world falling into some dumb luck!