A Sadist Guide to the US Open

I know there aren’t a lot of Barstool readers who open a new issue and rifle wildly through the pages thinking, “I’ll check out the hot cocktail waitress pictures later…first I gotta see if there are any articles about golf.” But here goes anyway. The U.S. Open at Pinehurst is this weekend, dammit, and it’s one of the best events of the year. The final round of the Open is one of those yearly sporting moments I just can’t turn away from, like the Super Bowl or the World Series or Mike Tyson getting his head handed to him by some anonymous pug.

There was a time that I would never have imagined I’d be watching golf on TV; that I’d sooner watch a farm report or (God forbid) PBS before I’d watch a single stroke of golf. But that was a long time ago.

Now I love it. I don’t watch every tournament, every weekend. I didn’t slog my way through the worst winter in the history of weather so I could sit inside on a nice Sunday in June and watch the Claim Denier’s Insurance Invitational. But there are some tourneys that are played on great courses that make them special. The TPC at Sawgrass, Pebble Beach, Harbour Town, to name just a few.

Then there are the four Majors, which are not to be missed. And the U.S. Open is the most compelling of the bunch. If the Majors were the Fantastic Four, the U.S. Open would be The Thing: the biggest, the most powerful, and the one you can’t keep your eyes off. [To further torture this metaphor, The Masters would be Mr. Fantastic, also cool, but a little full of himself (nice name); the British Open would be the Human Torch, exotic and unpredictable; and the PGA Championship would be the Invisible Girl, the least impressive of the four (“Invisibility? Great. We’ll call you if we need to know what people are saying behind our backs”).] The U.S. Open is the one everyone really wants to see, and now it’s Clobberin’ Time.

I love the U.S. Open for several reasons. First, because I’m a 16-handicapper who’s frustrated that I haven’t been able to turn myself into a good golfer. Second, I’m a sadistic, pitiless, rancorous, merciless 16-handicapper who loves watching the great golfers getting kicked in the Dockers by a golf course.

The U.S. Open is great because the U.S. Golf Association makes it the most difficult tournament of the year, which makes the players insane. The goal of the USGA is to make par be a good score. If the winner walks off after 72 holes with a score of 1-under par for the tournament, the USGA feels like they’ve done their jobs. The way they do it is by messing with the course. The harder they make it, the better a test of golf it is. And the louder the players scream about how tough they’ve made it, the more fun it is for the duffers sitting at home.

The tour players hate par. They want to be shooting for birdies on every hole. They love those tournaments where 27-under takes home the big cardboard check from the guy in the empty suit. So for one event a year, the USGA makes them take their $700 titanium drivers and $80/dozen Kevlar balls and shoot for pars. The same pars that Bobby Jones made using a ball peen hammer duct taped to the end of a broom stick.

The first thing they do is grow the rough until it’s about the length and consistency of a field of romaine lettuce heads. This is great for the average weekend golfer to watch because you finally get to see the big hitters get penalized for missing the fairway. In most tour events, these guys can rip their drives 330 yards plus, and miss the fairway by the width of City Hall Plaza, and still have a better lie than I do in the middle of the fairway at my local municipal. To see these one of these errant shots land in the rough then bury itself in the Caesar salad while the poor SOB who hit it tries to figure out how he’s going to get out there, warms my heart like a shot of tequila.

Next, the USGA makes the fairways so narrow Lindsay Lohan couldn’t walk down the middle without brushing her hip-huggers against the rough on both sides. They start the growing months in advance until by the time the first round rolls around, the extra foliage makes the course looks like the Ent attack on Isengard. What this does to the best golfers in the world is make them hit iron shots off the tee and turn their drivers into something they only use for hitting autograph seekers. When they complain about this, the hackers among us have to remember that the difference between how far these guys hit their 5 iron and your best drive is about a $5 cab ride.

Finally, they trick up the greens. Last year at Shinnecock Hills, hitting to the greens was like trying to land a ball on the hood of a car. Players were dropping shots in front of the greens only to watch them roll right over and off the back. Kevin Stadler and Billy Mayfair, who were in contention after Round 1 shot an 85 and 89 respectively that was described in the national press as “Jerry Thornton-esque.” Ernie Els double-bogeyed the first hole, and then suffered an emotional collapse that was more painful to watch than the Capt. Acevedo rape scene in “The Shield.”

Not that I like to watch these guys suffer. I admire the hell out of what they do. If I had a very limited number of wishes one of the first things I wish for is to be as good as these guys. (That’s more important to me than even the “bigger penis” thing. I’d rather be Sergio Garcia than Ron Jeremy.) But I do want to see them struggle. Struggle to make pars, just like me and all the drunken weirdos in my Thursday Night League. To watch them hit bad shot, then see the ball kick into the rough then pull a blanket over itself is to be able to relate to them. Watching them throw clubs in disgust shows the average, crappy golfer that we’re not terrible, the game of golf itself just wins most of the time.