Touche… I was thinking more Tom Weiskopf than Bobby Locke. Locke had far better action especially with his rt arm than Rory and wasn’t dependent on a pure timing release. And I’ll most certainly call Rory a genius putter if he continues to hole out like that consistently for 10 yrs. I got no problem eating crow as long as its got a decent demi glaze…
Ok, who else here heard one of the commentators (Noblio or Chamblee…can’t remember) make the remark “at the end of the day were in the entertainment business”
I just about puked when I heard that…I almost asked my old lady to change the channel to Iron Chef, where at least there was some sensible competition going on. The only one not speaking crazy last weekend was that chubby guy who always wears the bow-tie’s. He basically told everybody “you all are jumping the gun here. All this talk about the new era of Rory is WAY premature” he really let Noblio and Chamblee have it, and the minute they cut camera back to Brandel and Frank, they got SUPER defensive about it…anyone else see that?
It’s a shame Chris Farley is not still alive…they could put him as a commentator on there, and I think I would have gotten more out of it…
Andy
Ok…I have Wikipedia loaded, let’s see if I can stumble through this with minimal assistance.
The beauty of this, and many other forums is the opportunity to discuss multiple interests, including how to shoot 65- for those that might be interested.
Thought this was pretty cute in case you hadn’t seen it:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6D7ReWQMGho[/youtube]
When everything becomes all emotion and no substance on how to actually fix a problem - all you get is a bunch of division and finger pointing.
The way to open people’s eyes is by enlightening them that there is a better way to swing a club that was already discovered 80 years ago. Making all the statements about making courses obsolete, upright/light equipment ruining the swing, space age materials compromising the golf ball, etc. is not going to gain any traction until you prove to people that you can not only play better golf, but the golf you play is more satisfying. Unfortunately, this is slow and takes a bunch of work.
The quickest way to the masses is getting a pro on the PGA tour that is willing to say “stuff it” to the establishment, walk the walk with classic equipment and capture people’s hearts with the truth and wins! Is anyone talented and brave enough to do that? There are plenty of guys out there with the resources that don’t need the money anymore that could take that baton and run with it. Perhaps the senior tour would be more fertile with the Langer, Couples, and Watson crowd?
Captain Chaos
Well said Captain, ranting just makes us sound like pissed-up angry Toon fans on the steps of St James Park with our mis-spealt banner. 
I’m not a competitive golfer by any stretch, so I have a question about the US Open set up for the competitive golfers here.
The consensus seems to be that the historically “normal” US Open set up (very high rough, very narrow fairways, very hard greens) is a better test of golf than what we’ve had the past few years…and especially this year. I guess the theory is that the tougher set up will be a better determinant of true champion golfers. Yet when I look at the list of past champions I see a high percentage of names that I don’t consider among the game’s historical greats…Ed Furgol, Jack Fleck, Dick Mayer, Tony Jacklin, Orville Moody, Lou Graham, Andy North, Lee Janzen, Lucas Glover. Not that these guys weren’t very good players, but if they are great champions (as the US Open winner should be) why don’t they have multiple (or any) other majors or 20+ tour wins or international wins?
What is it about the US Open set up that can completely stifle historically great and stylistically diverse players such as Snead, Faldo, Ballesteros and Norman, can hold a guy like Palmer to 1 win, but provide a venue for players like Andy North and Lee Janzen to win twice?
I also notice that when the Masters went to a more US Open type of set up, they immediately came up with a couple of less than great (from an historical perspective) champions…Zack Johnson and Trevor Immelman.
Just asking…I don’t have the perspective of a professional tournament player so I’d like to hear from those who do.
Thank you
It’s a good question Dukeman.
I think there are a few ways to look at it
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Maybe North, Janzen & co were steady as she goes players who did all the right things for Major Championship events but ‘regular’ tour events evaded them with more regularity because those regular courses played easier for lesser players who could get away with ‘murder’ a little more when they hit bad shots
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Majors are very hard to win- right place at the right time and you can play great and still get pipped by someone else who was also having the best week of their lives, which is possibly why Player, Palmer only won the US Open once and guys like Snead & Norman never won it ever
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Player, Nicklaus, Trevino, Palmer all played against one another and were all biting each other’s hands off to win… 4 wins total is the most by anyone so it is obviously a difficult tournament to win
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Luck can play a part in Majors…very early and very late tee times bring weather into play…rough trampled by spectators plays a big role sometimes in recovery… etc etc
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A Major normally involves testing a players entire range…some players who didn’t win the big ones may have been inefficient in one area and the test of the course really showed them out
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Mental pressure- Majors are important…to players and the media because they hold the most importance in the grand scale of things…flight or flight?..some fall into a win, others go and take it…when some super human goal is on offer some rise to the occasion, some run because of everything that comes with it…
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Players like Duval, baker-Finch for eg…won a Major and then fell off the cliff, either by design, or because they did it, liked it and achieved their life goal and felt they could rest on their laurels or they dropped off the radar because they didn’t like what came with being a Major Champion and wanted to be back to a more normal golfing mentality and the expectations that came with that…
Majors SHOULD be an exacting test, that demands better than average abilities in a variety of areas to succeed.
The PGA Championship has always in my opinion brought up the least expected winners because it was basically set up as a regular tour event but tagged a Major…we now see a trend happening leaning towards this same mentality in all the Majors because of graduated rough, watering greens, shorter rough, trees pulled out for spectators to move around instead of being trouble for errant drives…lesser winners than the so called Champs Of The Game are popping up with more regularity…
It used to be that the 'Champs" won 85% of all the Majors…now we have 50 to 1 longshots or more winning because the courses aren’t an exacting enough test to produce the Major Champions that we as golfers expect to see win and the equipment is bunching players closer together where a hott putter is more effective than great shotmaking and control of your ball
Depends on what you dislike more, vitriol or apathy…
The PGA is the easiest fix in golf & no it isn’t returning to match play. Bring back the lifetime exemption & its instantly the most important tournament in the world. It’s the ultimate powerball ticket & obviously at this point nobody cares what the game will look like 20 yrs from now so stop pretending. Ten bucks says we’ll all be wearing hazmat/radiation suits anyway…
Nice thorough response to Dukeman, Two.
Maybe providence has some standing also. I always like to think back to when Crenshaw won at Augusta soon after Harvey died. He played inspired golf that seemed to come from somewhere else. I know Ben was the one pulling the trigger, but maybe something magical was happening that is beyond our ability to comprehend. Or when he was Ryder Cup captain…“I have a feeling about this.” I seem to recall other examples on tour where the script for the winner was something heavenly, but I can’t recall the players at the moment. Boy, would I ever like to play a round with Crenshaw…that would be divine for sure.
Did you ever get paired with Crenshaw during your active tour years, and if so, I can only imagine it was some great fun!
BTW: Don’t think I have ever tipped my hat to you formally. But I think it is way beyond cool that you spend your time and energy with the ABS site. How fortunate members, students, and outside guests are to have someone of your caliber offer instruction, insights, and deep personal knowledge about this game. It is “inside the ropes” communication absent the rope. It is water cooler discussions absent corporate walls and security. It is a poker game absent cards where only discussion carries the night. It is many things, but one word stands out absent nothing…GREAT! 
I only played with Crenshaw once…but I did have the opportunity to speak with him a few times on different occasions and I got him to sign a couple of books I have that he authored. He wrote some really nice things for me inside the cover
He was always an idol of mine as he was a ‘key player’ in that era of late 70’s early 80’s when i was really getting into golf.
I used to love his fluid swing and the tempo but obviously his asset was a putting stroke to die for.
The first time I ever saw him live in person was at the Australian PGA Championship at Royal Melbourne (1982?? I think)…I walked in and there he was on the first tee, and bang started off with 7 birdies in a row!!! He obviously remembers that as I spoke to him in person about it and the fact he is such a historian of the game makes him on an even higher level in my opinion. I think he would enjoy reading and probably side with a lot of what we write on the site about courses & equipment.
Most of our conversations were not about golf, but about golf courses and designs (because he knew I was from Melbourne)…and he honestly believes the Melbourne Sandbelt to be the greatest golfing landscape in the world…for those that haven’t seen it viewtopic.php?f=45&t=235 I did a topic about it when we first started here at ABS…it’s worth a look
The older version of US Open ‘graduated rough’
The second cut in this view is at least as long as Congressional’s ‘main rough’ was… see main rough in background at about 4 inches high
See the rough around the green at Oakmont in 1983…this is on a 225 yard Par 3 (16th) where players were actually hitting 4 woods and not 5 or 6 irons to that same yardage as they do today
I get private messages all the time with the same accolades…don’t worry, TM and I understand everyone’s gratitude without ever needing formal praise. 
…the nude beach barring the over-weight over 35 crowd…
Indeed.
Captain Chaos
Good Questions Dukeman,
I think Two’s response is spot on.
Growing up, I saw the majors and three unique tests being The British Open, The US Open, The Masters. At one time the PGA was a match play event making it unique.
The whole idea of winning all the majors required, or would show that you had diversity in your game, making you learn all the shots or being capable of playing a different style of game if you needed. Seve didn’t win the US Open… of course.
The sad thing now is that this simply doesn’t exist anymore… maybe to some degree The British Open… but even now the courses don’t play like they should as long as the guys are hitting it with today’s equipment. The great historic layouts are much better thought out from tee through green than anyone seems to pay attention to these days. But they must be played in proper context… not what we have been seeing lately. The time, effort and money spent on redesign work is unnecessary in most cases because they still fall short of what obviously needs to be addressed.
What we are witnessing “live” is a homogenized yield from a failing institution being happily devoured like “cotton candy” by the ignorant golf masses.
I think the PGA going back to match play would be very exciting and would make for good tv viewing. The world golf championships, especially the match play in Tuscon, feel almost more like majors than the US Open did this year and the PGA did last year. I think the Open Championship will always maintain its integrity much better simply due to the fact that the governing bodies can’t decide to “turn off” the elements. Wind, rain, etc. will always be a threat to factor in an Open, whereas the USGA can choose to not grow the rough and to soak the course for a US Open.
I think that a US Open is the type of event that, if done correctly, could be set up to actually make modern equipment a hindrance. If they set it up at around 7200 with 5 inch rough and 20 yard fairways at 300 yards from the tee, modern drivers wouldn’t do much good.
From my own playing experience
The USGA or Congressional or whomever said that the wet weather played a part in taming the course.
- wet weather should encourage rough growth, so they either used poor fertilizer or they were still cutting it down for it to be limited
The USGA are bending over and taking one up their rear end from the Mickelson’s of the world …who in all their interviews heap praise on the committees for the ‘graduated rough’ idea …saying it gives players an opportunity to manufacture shots and show their skills. What hogwash. A skilled player is about control…get it in the fairway, get it on the green…why should someone be rewarded for mediocrity from the tee shot by being given graduated shorter rough?..since when did the recovery shot become more important than the tee shot and hitting greens in reg by precision play?
McDowell told the world at his defending champion media day ( a month or so before the event) that NO-ONE would break par and it was the toughest course he had ever seen…So what happened in the space of 4 weeks???
The golf ball…rears it’s head again…in wet conditions the golf ball of pre 2000 would spin like crazy on wet greens. Control of the ball onto the surface became critical. It was actually harder to play in wet conditions than normal conditions because the ball would dig more and spin more and a player had to come up with a variety of shots to try eliminate that occurrence…and you had to be on the fairway to gain extra control, because the wet rough would affect the spin even more…nowadays…the ball doesn’t spin at all, so players just take dead aim still and plop it next to the hole day in and day out and never fear it coming back too much at all
The courses have no defense mechanism even with variance of weather conditions now partly because of the golf ball…you can’t grow land but you can grow grass…so tournament courses need to grow more grass and make some rough and bring the fairways in a little…TPC River Highlands again this week in the rain is being made a mockery of as a course…an amateur shooting 60- gimme a break
This may sound crazy but I always found the wind in the USA to be less threatening than other parts of the world…it’s strength wasn’t in the same degree…eg: in a 20 mph right to left wind in the USA I could aim half the distance right of target than I would have to in Australia or Europe to allow for wind movement. It just seemed weaker in it;s resistance to the ball.
Then when the ball started curving less you could cut that allowance distance in half again…so instead of aiming 10 yards right or left of a target to allow for the wind you now only had to aim 2.5 yards right or left.
Funny you should mention wind Two as I was just thinking about that the other day, but not quite in the same context.
Here’s the deal. Our range flags are real light nylon and will start full flapping at a certain mph…don’t know what that number is though. On the other hand, one of the flags is a golf flag but was a promotional type deal from the Orlando show and it is a very heavy nylon- probably four times as heavy. That flag really had more to do with the promotional logo on it versus being a legitimate weight golf flag- if there is such a thing.
The other day in about 15 mph winds all the flags, except the promotional one, were nearly fully flapping. That observation got me thinking.
Are all flags on tour a standard weight or do they vary some. Or are they designed with some thought of the wind mph in mind?
I thought maybe a flag designed to only fully flap at say 20 mph would take some guesswork out of the equation. So if the flag is fully open, one would know the wind is at least 20 mph.
Just a goofy rat thought that happens from time to time.
As for U.S. air: that’s maybe because we are full of hot air! 
The levels of humidity and the higher the air pressure will affect the ball more in the same mph wind. I remember reading this in a Sam Snead book.
When I started to look at golf on TV, the US Open was perhaos the biggest downer of the year. Expectations were high, but nobody played well and whoever won did so because he was lucky and whoever else was in contention down the line either choked or got unlucky. The win tended to go to a very mechanical player who had the week of his lifetime, hitting a bunch of fairways and putting well. Tiger in 2000 was a rare exception. That was perhaps the best golf I will ever see on TV. k out of it etc.
The US Open course has usually been set up to reward the best scrambler (whith a healthy dose of good luck) and not the best player. You see other tournaments where form players run away from the field. That rarely happens in the US open. The random factor on each hole is just too high. I have no doubts that it is the toughest test in golf mentally, but russian rulette is very tough mentally too, but skills has nothing to do with the outcome…
This year the course was set up in a way that enabled the players who were playing well to score well. I like to see the winner running away from the pack in a major. That is the sign of a true champion AND a discriminating course.
1984 US Open