Let's go back to the 1974 U.S. Open at Winged Foot when Sandy Tatum, then chairman of the USGA's Championship Committee said, "We're not trying to embarrass the best players in the world. We're trying to identify them."
It was a mantra I was keenly aware of when I began my USGA playing experience at the 1983 Girls' Junior Amateur and through my broadcast career with the governing body that ended in 2014. As a player, you always knew the week would be a brutal test, contested on a great course.
The player who got the A+ on the exam held the trophy at week's end. As an announcer, it was much the same. The microscope was tuned in with a bit more focus and the expectations were ramped up. Bring your best stuff. It was the national championship. Period.
But a trend has developed over the past few years that concerns me, and I am quite certain I am not alone. In nearly every U.S. Open since 2011, the players have rescued the championship. Rory McIlroy set 11 scoring records throughout the championship that week, taking the spotlight from an anemic Congressional Country Club softened by rain and a dramatic lack of rough.
In 2012 at Olympic Club in San Francisco, it actually felt like a traditional U.S. Open setup, a four-day grind won by Webb Simpson. Many people remember it more for the Bird Man interrupting the trophy presentation than the championship itself. It really was a classic marathon on a course pretty much left to its own nasty character, with the exception of green surrounds altered by long rough grown on the high sides and extremely short mowing patterns on the sides sloping away from the already severe greens.
At Merion in 2013, we saw a course manipulated to the extent that it was not uncommon to have fairway lines moved 10-plus yards in either direction, leaving their normal irrigation heads buried in the rough. A back tee at 18 was built for the championship, leaving a good number of players unable to reach the fairway when the slightest of breezes came up in their faces. The USGA prepared the final green in such a penal manner that not even a perfectly struck 4-iron by the eventual champion, Justin Rose, could hold the putting surface.
For Pinehurst in 2014, there was yet another facelift and, although I applauded the changes overall as well as the water savings that were incorporated, the USGA still destroyed the character of the third hole by making it a drivable par-4. As I said then, that move "was like taking a box of crayons to a classic painting." Martin Kaymer's brilliance saved another championship where the storylines had become more about the course and changes to it than identifying a national champion.
And then there was Chambers Bay in 2015. It was a travesty of a golf course, conditioning and setup, and par was even switched on two holes during the week. The drama of the duel between Jordan Spieth, Dustin Johnson and others who had a chance late that Sunday saved the championship.
And finally this year's U.S. Open at Oakmont. The course is borderline sadistic all on its own, without any manipulation. The lightning-quick greens led us to witness a rules debacle which threatened to derail the eventual champion, the integrity of the competition and fairness to the other players still on the course when the highly debatable infraction occurred. None of that could keep Dustin Johnson from winning his first major championship. Another player save.
My end point is this: If the USGA is trying to identify a national champion and it chooses these venues on their own merits to be the arena for the examination, why the need to nip, tuck, alter and mask these courses?
If the new mantra is being "innovative," why not be truly innovative and stop messing with these courses? Move the tees back to the tips, let mother nature dictate the condition of play (we don't play golf in a dome after all) and let a four-day slugfest produce a winner.
People aren't glued to the World Series, NBA Finals or Super Bowl to watch the referees or hear the messaging about changes to the field of play and its sustainability. What's not sustainable is 150 plus superintendents keeping Oakmont in form for U.S. Open week.
What is the harm in checking our egos and messaging at the front door and simply letting the best players in the world showcase their talent to identify the champion?
Absolutely nothing.