Overhauling the U.S. Open
A suggestion from a friend gets out of hand. But perhaps interesting!
With a few weeks behind us, it’s worth taking a look back at the 2023 U. S. Open. First, congratulations to Wyndham Clark, who absolutely won this on his own, playing excellent golf from tee to green. While Clark wasn’t (and still isn’t) a household name, he was ranked 32nd in the world prior to teeing off at the Los Angeles Country Club, so my question about when we are going to get a truly random winner remains open.
That said, it’s worth noting that when 2023 began, Clark was ranked 160th in the world. Now he has two wins including a major and is looking like a logical choice for the Ryder Cup. Life moves pretty fast, folks.
Just a week or so after the tournament concluded, it was announced that the 2031 U.S. Open will be back in Los Angeles at Riviera CC. You might be wondering if I got that year correct - yep, 2031. That actually means all U.S. Opens through 2035 are booked, and many for years afterwards. While open years exist, to show you how silly this is getting, 2049-2051 is booked up already.
The reason - like all the reasons - is financial. It’s a great thing for the USGA to have this locked down, and also for the courses/clubs involved to have that advance notice to prepare accordingly. Both Pinehurst No. 2 and Pebble Beach are considered part of the rota, and roughly every five years the tournament returns to each.
We can do better. And my friend Nuclear Niblick suggested the following:
If I'm creating a rota you have 3 boxes of courses.
1 every 10 year courses, Pebble, Pinehurst, Oakmont and shinny
2 every 20 year courses, winged foot, Olympic, tcc
3 once in generation courses weird courses we want to try out and see what's up
I like this. To paraphrase Forrest Gump, “I like this … a lot.”
But of course, I have my own twists here.
If you want to be on the U.S. Open rota, you can’t hold a regular season event. Nothing takes the shine off a U.S. Open than the realization the tour was just here a few months ago. This should resolve itself differently for different courses. For Pebble Beach, it should mean the end of the AT&T Pro-Am, an event that most pro golfers go out of their way to skip despite it being on one of the greatest courses in the world. For Torrey Pines, just drop it from the rota. It’s not a special enough course and we see it every year. And for Riviera, I think the same - but for opposite reasons. The Genesis Invitational at Riv is one of the best non-major stops all year. Torrey and Riviera and other courses that have previously hosted can all host PGA Championships, but not U.S. Opens. If you think that means I value the PGA Championship less than the U.S. Open, then congrats! You’re right.
Save the Genesis. Sorry, Riv, it’s PGA Championships for you. If we learned a lesson from LACC, it’s that the USGA doesn’t care about how many people are on site. Note that this is a very, very bad lesson - but let’s maximize it. Bring back courses like Chambers Bay, introduce new courses like Seminole, that can absolutely be a good test of golf but might not have the room for all the infrastructure the US Open seemingly always requires.
Be geographically diverse. Try as best as you can to get courses in the midwest, Pacific Northwest, etc., into the rotation. Make it a priority.
So, what courses make the cut? Like Niblick suggests, there are a few courses that should be in that “10 year rota” - and they are Pebble Beach, Pinehurst No. 2, Shinnecock Hills and Oakmont. And it should be consistent - if the year ends in a 5, we’re going to Pebble. A 7? That’s Oakmont. And we cover California, North Carolina, New York and Pennsylvania.
What are the “20 year courses”…? Keep in mind, we already have four of every ten years full with the above. So, if we use another four of them every decade, we can only have eight total to keep it within 20 years. I’ve chosen Merion, Oakland Hills, Los Angeles Country Club, The Country Club, Olympic Club, Erin Hills and Chambers Bay. You’ll notice that’s only seven courses, but I couldn’t settle on an 8th. We’ll get there. Some may question if Erin Hills or Chambers Bay warrant this, to which I say that they absolutely do. They’re fantastic courses, they’re public (which is a nice balance to the private courses), and they are in parts of the country that don’t get enough professional golf. They are also big enough courses to provide a great test for the pros (and Chambers has fixed its green condition issues, so let it go, Mr. Player.)
We’re also “relegating” a few courses to the PGA Championship. That includes Torrey, Riviera but also Bethpage, Southern Hills, Baltusrol, Hazeltine, Oak Hill and others. Some are already PGA Championship courses, but none need to come back to the US Open rota.
So, we have two (or three!) times every decade with room for wild card locations. Some of these may be great! Some may not work out. (Some are entirely unfeasible, but this is MY exercise, not yours.)
To me, there are some easy wild card courses - ones we have seen for Ryder Cups or PGA Championships like Whistling Straits. I personally would put Winged Foot in here, as I don’t think it’s such a great course on TV that I need to get back there on a regular basis. I’d also bring back some courses like Cherry Hills in Denver, and then … lets get WEIRD. I’m not going to be foolish enough to suggest courses like Pine Valley or Cypress Point, who absolutely don’t want part of this, but how about some other great courses mere mortals rarely see? What about National Golf Links of America? Seminole? Sand Hills, Ballyneal …heck, what about Ohoopee Match Club? (They’d have to build actual tee boxes there, to start with.)
How about Shoreacres in Illinois or Rock Creek Cattle Company in Montana? Can you imagine a US Open in Montana? I cannot - which means it should probably happen!
As a proxy (and at the time, I had Olympic Club as a wild card course), I threw this together:
(Let me reiterate that it sure would be nice if Substack could handle tables. I know how sloppy this looks.) But … that’s diversity there. We return to great courses, but we also explore some new and cool ones. Perhaps the specific courses themselves aren’t spot on, but I think aside from the wild cards, they are pretty close. I really wanted to ensure that the tournament moves around the country, as too much of professional golf just never gets to some areas. While there ARE great courses in the Northeast, California and the Southeast, the rest of the country deserves to see our national open in person.
Thoughts? It’s an idea that we can get crazy with because it’s never gonna happen. How could this be even wilder? What courses did I overlook or miss?