World Wide Webb
Another Major Collapse For Tiger
Purkey: Simpson Emerges From The Fog
Wyatt Wins Sunnehanna Shootout
Olympic Medalist
Imagine playing golf on tilt-a-whirl, roller-coaster fairways and hitting your approaches
into greens mowed by a Zamboni.
Imagine “The Scream,” by artist Edvard
Munch.
Multiply those visions in your mind’s eye
and you will begin to understand the player’s
task at the brutal but wildly entertaining 112th
U.S. Open last week.
It was, dripped Justin Rose sarcastically,
“Fun. … Sadistic fun.”
Congratulations to the winner/survivor
Webb Simpson, who shot 68-68 on the
weekend. No one in the 156-man field broke
par for the week.
This championship was Rice-a-Roni San
Francisco treat at its best, staged not far from
where where hippies once roamed Haight-Ashbury and closer to where Mark Twain
proclaimed summer was actually winter.
Pars were precious and birdies treasured
on this pretty but poisonous routing, fairly
and clearly ordered up by the USGA to erase
the memories of Rory McIlroy’s 16 under
undressing of Congressional at last year’s Open.
And when Nick Watney holed a long iron for
double-eagle on the par- 5 17th Thursday, it
marked the the richest vein of gold discovered
in these here parts since Sutter’s Mill.
Kudos to Mike Davis, the USGA’s course
set-up maestro, for hitting all the right notes on
an Olympic Club layout dissonant with reverse
cambers and fraught with imperfect pitch.
And finally, a tip of the flat-brimmed cap
to 17-year-old low amateur runner-up Beau
Hossler. With a name right out of a Burt
Reynolds movie and a game right out of a
Mark Frost book, Hossler, quietly confident
beyond his years, gave us a sneak peek, for
three days, at the bright side of golf’s future.
Brian Hewitt
U.S. Open winner Webb Simpson
