Championship Philosophy: Par is Ideal

Here’s my June Golfdom column, which has an exclusive early draft of championship philosophy statement. In the final edition, Walter Driver and friends write, “There is no USGA target score for a U.S. Open. While the final score at some U.S. Open sites will be at or near par, the USGA does not try to formulate a course set up that will only produce a winning score of at or near even par.”

Chip Alexander writes about speculation on the winning score and naturally, Tom Meeks comes through with a beauty.

"I think 4, 5 or 6 under probably will win," said Meeks, senior director of rules and competitions. "In a perfect world, yeah, we'd like to see even par win it, but we're not going to do anything funny to get that score. We want it fair, and we think we have it set up fair."

They don’t try to produce a winning score near par, but in an perfect world, par would be the winning score!