Summertime and the living is dreary eh? Here we are, marching towards the peak of the golf season and the weather in this country recently has looked as dismal as Theresa May opening a particularly disappointing bank statement.
Driving rain here, boisterous gusts there? Instead of nonchalantly sauntering around and revelling in the sun’s vibrant, morale-boosting embrace, the conditions over the last few days have left us hunched, contorted and tousled like a flustered Quasimodo trying to operate an oscillating, high velocity cooling fan.
Have a peek at the forecast on the television and you tend to be greeted by swirling, birling white arrows sweeping over the country which makes you think you’re involved in the opening credits of Dad’s Army; you know, that bit when those animated, pointy German thingamjigs start jabbing and prodding at a map of the south coast?
Over in Wisconsin, meanwhile, all the arrows point towards Erin Hills and this week’s US Open.
In terms of coming under ferocious scrutiny, the event’s organising body, the USGA, may as well be squeezed into a petri dish and put under an industrial-sized microscope for the next few days.
Despite having the best players in the world teeing-up in their showpiece event, the USGA officials have managed to make themselves the centre of attention down the years.
Whether it’s questionable course set-ups or controversial rules palavers, the top brass have taken an unnecessary chunk of the limelight. It shouldn’t be this way, of course.
When you’ve got golf’s finest exponents all gathered in one spot, all you need to do is present them with a stiff but fair test and let them do what they do best.
It should be tough, interesting and inventive not a brutal exercise in one-dimensional drudgery. At times, though, that has almost seemed an alien concept to the USGA. Thank goodness they don’t have to organise a hung Parliament.
Golf is a spectator sport too and part of the entertainment business. It needn’t be a grisly spectacle.
This will be the second time in three years that the USGA have opted to take the US Open to a course which has never hosted a major before and there’s certainly nothing wrong with exploring uncharted territory.
Two years ago at Chambers Bay, however, the greens, by plenty of withering accounts, were so bad it was akin to putting on the higgledy-piggledy basalt columns of the Giant’s Causeway.
Even when they went back to Oakmont last season, a revered course which was hosting the US Open for the ninth time, the USGA were still bombarded with criticism.
That had nothing to do with venue, of course, more their ham-fisted handling of the well-documented rules fiasco involving eventual winner Dustin Johnson which left all and sundry not knowing what the leader’s actual score was for most of a farcical final round.
Johnson was handed a one shot penalty at the end but, mercifully, it’s didn’t have any bearing on the overall result. The fall-out was damaging, though.
To those casual observers peering on from the outside, golf must have looked head-scratchingly unfathomable. Here was the conclusion to one of the biggest events of the year and it was clouded in chaotic uncertainty.
The USGA’s slogan ‘for the good of the game’ would have faltered on the first paragraph of the Trade Descriptions Act.
Traditionally, the US Open tends to be an uncompromising, attritional trudge where par is guarded with a miser’s care. They could re-name it the General Custer Invitational such is the last man standing nature of this backs-to-the-wall golfing battle.
If they were feeling particularly sadistic, the USGA could stretch the Erin Hills layout to a mind-mangling 8000 yards this week which, in itself, is an appalling prospect.
Given the various shenanigans in recent years, it’s perhaps not surprising that the USGA are facing something of a fight to win hearts and minds.
There remains an inherent lack of trust and, dare we say it, respect among touring professionals towards the governing body.
With the USGA’s credibility about on a par with the aforementioned Theresa – well, maybe not that bad – Mike Davis, the chief executive, and his team could do with an engaging, entertaining week in which the players and the golf they produce grab all the headlines.
It may just be a temporary reprieve, mind you. The USGA high command will have to gird the loins ahead of July’s US Women’s Open at a Bedminster course owned by a certain Donald Trump.
Let’s just get through this one first.
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