The fate of golf would seem to lie in the hands of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club and the United States Golf Association. Can we expect that they will protect and reverence the spirit of golf?
MAX BEHR
Before you overseas readers tell me you've seen this, remember we Americans haven't been as obsessed with Rory McIlroy. Therefore, fun stuff like this Rory television appearance in 1999, eerily reminscent of Tiger's Mike Douglas Show, gulp, hit, is set up and explained by Alex Myers.
There are a couple of good reads today about the continued decline of American performances at majors following the U.S. Open where Kevin Chappell and Robert Garrigus were the low Yanks (though it should be noted that Chappell, a former NCAA champion, playing his first U.S. Open finished T-3).
The culprits were college golf and the PGA Tour, McCormack said. By eliminating match play and de-emphasizing individual performance in their tournaments, he said, colleges trained nonwinners, and the PGA Tour compounded the problem with its top-125 exemption policy and purse-distribution structure.
He recommended the radical cure of heavily weighting purse distribution so the winner would collect 50 percent, the runner-up 20 percent and the third-place finisher 10 percent — with 5 percent to fourth place and the remaining 15 percent to players in spots 5 through 12.
Although none of his suggestions were adopted, American golf did go through a resurgence in 1987, with Americans winning three of the four majors. A year later, they won two more, including the first of Curtis Strange’s consecutive United States Open titles, and three again in 1989.
This trend will probably also cycle through, although there was some concern earlier this year when Bill Haas, one of the PGA Tour’s better young players, who won twice in 2010, said what he really wanted was “to be able to have 13 top 10s, because even without winning, that’s a better year than my year last year, in my opinion, when I won twice.”
Here’s another, more crazed theory: Did Tiger Woods kill off a generation of American golfers?
Hear me out. Perhaps the enormous, historic, encompassing shadow cast by Tiger from 1997-2009 made an entire generation of American players play with an inferiority complex, knowing they’d never be as good as the all-time legend. Even though Tiger was a global icon, perhaps there is something to being across an ocean and raised in a different culture that makes players more free from Tiger’s omnipresent greatness.
Martin Samuel gets the most carried away in his Rory McIlroy-wins U.S. Open hyperbole:
Does America have the stomach to sit through a decade of this, if Graeme McDowell and Padraig Harrington are correct in their assessment of his potential?
On hearing Harrington had McIlroy in contention to surpass Nicklaus’s 18 major titles, McIlroy sunk his head into his hands. ‘Oh, Paddy, Paddy, Paddy,’ he murmured softly. He still had 18 holes to play and the ghosts of Augusta to outrun at the time.
By the end it did not seem such a wild opinion. Every facet of McIlroy’s performance carried an inescapable sense of history in the making.
Robert Lusetich grounds his views in reality:
In the end, it’s unfair to start placing these kind of burdens on McIlroy.
He himself understands their danger.
Heavy lies the crown.
“It’s nice that people say that, ‘He could win 20 major championships,’ but at the end of the day, I’ve won one,” he said.
“I obviously want to add to that tally. But you can’t let what other people think of you influence what you have to do. You have to just go out there, work hard, believe in yourself.”
In other words, let’s let him be Rory McIlroy rather than trying to make him the next Tiger Woods.
Steve Elling and John Huggan from this week's Pond Scrum:
Elling: Snap judgments, like Rory's occasional snap hook, are a dangerous proposition. Let's allow this one to breathe a bit. But it was transcendent, for sure. Really, he never wavered. Three bogeys and a double for the week? Guys had that much carnage and more on the card each day.
Interesting thought about par, John. Last time the Open was contested at Congressional, par was 70. So that's four extra strokes of red numbers right there. Again, nobody is diminishing the feat, just aiming for some proper context among the hyperventilating.
Huggan: Rory's play, on the other hand, deserves any plaudit going. For a 22-year old to compete with such assurance, poise and skill was something to relish. And best of all, golf has a superstar who can play at a transcendent level and be a nice guy at the same time.
Z-Score measures a particular performance against the entire field of values, accounting for both the average result and the full range of performances from top to bottom. It does a great job in capturing how much better or worse an individual score was versus the entire population, producing a value that translates across different tournaments, locales, and generations. For the purposes of this study, we analyzed the scores produced by players in every major since 1960,2 including only those players who completed four rounds. Performances in any sort of playoff were ignored.
But according to SBJ, they peaked at 7.4 from 7-7:30 when Rory McIlroy was finishing off his record breaking win.
Meanwhile in the brewing controversy over the telecast opening with a strange edit of the Pledge of Allegiance, the Internet is ablaze with rage after Golf Channel On NBC issues a strange statement. Cindy Boren reports.
NBC apologized — the clip also omitted “indivisible” — with Dan Hicks reading a statement during play in the fourth round at Congressional: “We began our coverage of this final round just about three hours ago and when we did it was our intent to begin the coverage of this U.S. Open Championship with a feature that captured the patriotism of our national championship being held in our nation’s capital for the third time. Regrettably, a portion of the Pledge of Allegiance that was in that feature was edited out. It was not done to upset anyone and we’d like to apologize to those of you who were offended by it.”
That wasn't good enough for CNN's Jack Cafferty, who writes:
The original Pledge of Allegiance, of course, did not include the words, "Under God." They were added by Congress in the 1950s. As a result, they are as much a part of our salute to our flag as the rest of the words in the pledge. And it boggles the mind that a bunch of morons at NBC can take it upon themselves to decide which part to include and which part to omit. Those responsible ought to be fired on the spot.
Really?
Here's the clip:
Alright, here we go. Historic day calls for historic hyperbole!
Ledes
Golf’s next great prospect is every mother’s son, a self-effacing and unaffected 22-year-old from Northern Ireland, who bounced down the fairways to win his first major championship Sunday with a smile, a shrug and an incomparable swing.
Lawrence Donegan, The Guardian:
All hail Northern Ireland, golf's new global superpower, and all hail golf's new superstar Rory McIlroy, who won the 2011 US Open at Congressional Country Club in a style that earned favourable comparison with some of the game's greatest performances. The 22-year-old from the small town of Holywood emulated his compatriot Graeme McDowell, who won this championship at Pebble Beach last year. And then some.
Derek Lawrenson in the Daily Mail:
Maybe they will change the name of the venue to Processional after what Rory McIlroy achieved on an historic afternoon at the 111th US Open at Congressional.
Rory McIlroy buried the memory of his Masters meltdown the same way he buried the competition at the U.S. Open, with a breathtaking performance filled with the promise of more majors to come.
James Corrigan, The Independent:
"Rory McIlroy, the irresistible young Congressional candidate, was sworn in last night as golf's new global leader after a victory in the 111th US Open which was as thrilling for the game as it was chilling for his rivals. Washington is well accustomed to landslides but even the nation's capital was left open-mouthed by the one-sided nature of this contest.
"The clarion call was distinctive, and the response unerring. And, in this 111th edition of the US Open, Rory McIlroy – destiny’s child – answered the cry from those who bestow such favours with a breathtaking display never previously witnessed in this storied major championship: he shot a finishing round of 69 for a record low 268, 16-under-par, to claim a breakthrough maiden Major at Congressional Country Club yesterday.
Genuflect at the feet of the man responsible for the lowest aggregate in the history of this event; 16 under par. Pay your respects to a player that might yet redefine what is possible in this sport. As he walked up the 18th to deafening acclaim, nothing seemed beyond Northern Ireland’s Rory McIlroy.
Matt Jarvis in the Daily Mirror:
Stand aside Barack Obama. The most important man in Washington yesterday was Rory McIlroy.
And stand aside Tiger Woods. Your era as the greatest golfer on the planet is well and truly over after McIlroy marched imperiously to glory carving his name in golfing legend.
Just 71 days ago McIlroy suffered his infamous Meltdown at the Masters. Meltdown? What meltdown? Any fears that he was still scarred by the events of that April afternoon in Augusta were groundless as he turned the 111th US Open into a royal coronation.
Rory, Chasing Jack Division
Forget about the wounded Tiger —Rory McIlroy is the man to top the 18 Major championships won by Jack Nicklaus.
This bold prediction was made by three-time Major-winner Padraig Harrington, no less, as Congressional Country Club remained firmly in the grip of ‘Rory-Mania'.
This matters because the majors clock is now ticking on McIlroy. Like it or not, you can argue that McIlroy might have a better chance of tying or surpassing Nicklaus' record than Woods does. Woods has a 13-majors lead on the Northern Irishman, but McIlroy leads Tiger in the health category -- no surgical scars on his knees, no emotional scars on his personal life. He also has at least, what, 20 more good years and 80 more majors left in his career?
"There's a long way to go, isn't there?" said McIlroy's agent, Chubby Chandler, who hinted that Rory might increase his U.S. playing presence. "Certainly he has the talent."
Rory, Chasing Tiger Division
People used to revere Tiger. They LOVE Rory. They serenaded him along his victory parade. "Let's go, Rory, let's go," they chanted -- America's version of Ireland's "Ole, ole, ole, ole."
It was a Tiger-like performance. And now the comparison will begin, and while it may be a bit premature, it is not unfair. There are a lot of similarities between the two. And yes, McIlroy does now have 13 fewer majors than Woods, but Rory is also 13 years younger than Tiger.
Woods won his first major at 21; his second, the 1999 PGA Championship, at 23; and at the age of 24, had his record-setting 2000 season, becoming just the fifth player to complete the career Grand Slam. Through his first 10 majors as a professional, Woods had one victory. McIlroy now has one major through his first 10 tries as a pro.
All of a sudden does it really matter if Woods is playing in the British Open?
"This guy is the best I've ever seen, simple as that," said Graeme McDowell, who won last year's Open at Pebble Beach. "He's great for golf. He's a breath of fresh air for the game and perhaps we're ready for golf's next superstar and maybe Rory is it."
With Woods now damaged goods, golf is in desperate need of a new star and the youngster from Holywood, Northern Ireland, couldn't be more perfect if he came from central casting in Hollywood, Calif.
"There is little argument that McIlroy, who held at least a share of the lead at some point in the last four majors, is now the best in the game, if not No. 1 in the rankings. He is also the top draw, for adults and especially kids. Todd Hamilton, the 2004 British Open champion, was just finishing his eighth hole on his way to a final-round 70 Sunday when his youngest son, age 8, turned and asked his mother, "When can we go see Rory McIlroy?"
Everyone wanted a glimpse of the game's next big thing, a player who stood out from an early age but who may have been too nice, whose maturation had at times been hard to watch.
"He's going to be the first Rory, not the next Tiger," Miguel Angel Jimenez said as he left the club shortly before McIlroy teed off. "Tiger was Tiger. Nicklaus was Nicklaus. Palmer was Palmer. Rory is spontaneous, he's happy with his life, and he's going to rule the game of golf."
More Rory
He distanced himself so completely from the field, he seemed to be in a different tournament. He hit 62 of 72 greens in regulation, the most in a U.S. Open since the statistic has been tracked. His countryman Graeme McDowell left a note on his locker that said, “What golf course are you playing?”
Even McIlroy’s new putting coach, two time major winner Dave Stockton, believes that the Ulsterman is now an all-American hero.
Stockton said: “He is what golf totally needs. He will be the sixth non-US winner in the last eight years and I’ve got to tell you that the American people love him so much that they are not going to care.”
Bob Harig takes the first major hurdle angle and writes:
You can't win multiple major championships without getting the first one, but even coming close on multiple occasions does not guarantee that such an achievement is imminent.
Sergio Garcia and Colin Montgomerie serve as excellent examples. Who could have imagined 12 years ago at Medinah -- when a 19-year-old Garcia finished one stroke behind Tiger Woods at the PGA Championship -- that Garcia would still be without a major title in 2011?
Garcia, who had to qualify for this Open, managed to tie for seventh, assuring a return trip to the Olympic Club next year. It was his 16th top-10 in a major championship, and he has nine top-5s.
But no victories -- and he's not sounding confident, at age 31, about when a major will come.
"Maybe I'll get lucky one day," he said. "I know at the moment it's probably tough for me to get one because things are still not right."
Thomas Boswell in the Washington Post:
Many will compare this McIlroy victory with Woods’s 15-shot margin to win the ’00 U.S. Open. That’s not the best analogy. That Woods win was on a truly tough Open course with vicious rough; firm, fast greens; and ocean breezes. The next-best score was 3 over. McIlroy deserves every accolade he gets for 16 under. But McIlroy shooting zero at defenseless Congressional wasn’t as impressive as ’00.
It was also a victory for those who believe in karma. McIlroy’s gracious and mature response to failure at the Masters earned him new fans, something evident as he walked his rounds at Congressional. Based on the surge of fans seeking autographs or just trying to be near him, he was easily the most popular golfer in the field. Now he is poised to make good on expectations that he could be golf’s next superstar, taking up a spot vacated by the faltering Woods.
Dave Kindred says it all came together at No. 10.
At the Masters' 10th tee, the kid hit a drive so far left it practically came to rest in a house.
This time, in the Open, his 6-iron over water to the 10th green, 218 yards away, came to rest in our hearts.
On the 10th tee at Congressional Country Club, waiting for the group ahead to clear the green, McIlroy took a bite out of a Nutri-Grain bar. Then he walked slowly to the back of the tee.
In fact, the performance was so dominant and out of whack with the other scores at Congressional Country Club, fans and aficionados had to bite their tongues, lest they become too effusive. But what's not to love? The kid has panache, a swing to die for, doesn't cuss like a Green Beret or heave clubs, and eviscerated a course to such a degree, the members were speed-dialing architects, again. At what is billed as golf's toughest exam, a kid the same age as most college seniors aced the test as though he'd been given the answers beforehand.
Like all true greats, McIlroy has an innate ability to make an endlessly complicated and difficult game appear simple. With a club in his hands, he is Torvill and Dean on the ice, he is Frank Sinatra at the microphone and he is Lionel Messi with a ball at his feet. He has the potential to raise a mere sport to art form, his eventual status defined not by tournaments won and lost but by the views of his opponents and admirers.
Sean Martin with this about Rory's swing:
David Leadbetter said McIlroy has the tempo of Fred Couples, but with better positioning. Sean Foley called McIlroy a modern-day Sam Snead for his tempo and flexibility. Foley also compared the new Open champion to talents like Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt, athletes born with attributes that allow them to do things that others can’t.
“It’s a really gifted golf swing,” said Foley, who teaches Woods. “I hear guys saying this is the swing you want to copy. You can’t, because you have to be able to have the mobility and rotary speed in order to do it.
“It’s a combination of flexibility, balance, power and speed, and it’s very elegant.”
Miscellany
Teddy Greenstein on the low Americans Garrigus and Chappell.
If this keeps up, Davis Love III, who tied for 11th, just might have to use a Ryder Cup captain's pick on himself.
"I don't think the state of American golf is where everyone expects it to be," Chappell said, "but I think it's definitely going to go in the right direction."
Not that Chappell is obscure or anything, but the USGA misspelled his name on his Sunday quote sheet. Twice. It was recorded as "Chapel."
Michael Hiestand on all things television, from ratings to NBC's weird edit.
NBC, to its credit, played the hand it was dealt without overplaying it — albeit after an initial stumble. With the Open in the Washington, D.C., area, NBC early on ran a feature with the usual flag-waving and monuments — there must be a law requiring sportscasters covering an event within a cab ride of the Washington Monument to check off the usual capital clichés — which also seemed a bit odd since the tournament was revolving around an Irishman. And NBC later cryptically apologized on-air for having "edited out" a "portion of the Pledge of Allegiance" — an apparent reference to viewers seeing kids saying the pledge but not hearing them say "under God."
And NBC's Peter Jacobsen, in a skit, popping out of a portable toilet to get an autograph from lead analyst Johnny Miller wasn't clever.
But move out 15 years, and consider the following scenario: It is 2026, the United States is celebrating its 250th birthday, and the USGA brings the U.S. Open back to the nation’s capital.
“There’s such an appeal to that point,” USGA Executive Director Mike Davis said. “First of all, to get to the middle Atlantic, to get to the nation’s capital, infrastructure-wise, it works. There’s lots of land. It’s great to do an event. It’s good for spectators. The golf course certainly is a great test, and so there’s no reason we wouldn’t come back.”
There just aren't many compelling reasons to come back, either.
Geoff
It's Rory's world today and we're all just living in it.
Only your deepest thoughts and observations please.
The golf course remains moist and the humidity isn't helping dry it out at all, but the greens do seem to have just a bit more firmness today. Unfortunately, not enough to make a huge difference. The USGA's Mike Davis anticipates that it's just enough firmness to actually make well-struck shots into greens spin back even more than the last few days.
A few other observations:
- The par-4 14th will play as it has all week. There had been thoughts of radically altering the tee location to bring a set of pinching mounds into play and ask an interesting question of the players, but Davis, O'Toole and USGA President Jim Hyler discussed it and decided the softness of the course and greens just would not entice players to take the risk and that the move up could backfire.
- No changes have been made to the setup in response to scoring. The original plan going into the week has remained, with only the second hole playing a bit longer today in response to the soft conditions. Instead of 185 yards to a tucked left hole location, the yardage is now 204.
- The only thing Davis said he would do differently would have been to apply less water to the greens early in the week when conditions were dry.
- Superintendent Mike Giuffre says he has 6-7 inch roots on the greens and is understandably proud of how well they are rolling. The scoring certainly reflects just how true the surfaces are rolling.
- The 14th, 16th and 17th hole locations are very generous and will yield plenty of birdies, while the 15th and 18th are very difficult and will severely penalize balls missed on the wrong sides of Rees' tiers. The 18th green features a ridge through the center and the hole is cut just beyond it, making up-and-downs from the front area very difficult.
- The greens are rolling nearly 14 feet after preparation and losing about 5-6 inches an hour after that.
No one on property knows whether the President of the United States will visit the U.S. Open at Congressional, but the USGA has prepared just in case with a specially built tower behind the 16th green.
The tower has been in place all week and looked like a television location until a fronting shield was removed before today's final round. The location offers two areas of access for the President's arrival and departure as well as telecommuications hookups.
Here are a few glimpses of the tower:
At this point, we're not sure it does. McIlroy, unlike the recently deposed world No. 1, is killing them softly this week at Congressional. With kid gloves, and that's not a pun relating to the fact that he's barely above drinking age.
It's pretty easy to see where McIlroy gets his charm and manners. His father, Gerry, is here this week, a man who once worked three jobs to find the extra money needed to fund Rory's burgeoning amateur career. Earlier this week, I pulled Gerry away from his lunch to talk about his son, and he left his plate of grub on the clubhouse table in order to oblige.
The golf world needs Rory to play like Tiger, not act like him. The rest will take care of itself.
"If he won by a few here, he might have an aura," Chandler said. "He's only won two tournaments. If he wins a few more, he might just get that aura."
Other players make golf look contorted and highly taught. You can see every moving part in the twist-and-lean motion of Bubba Watson, and practically hear the grinding of gears in the mechanics of Tiger Woods. But McIlroy’s body language says, “What’s so hard about this?”
Tough and honest words from Graeme McDowell Saturday after the round. He certainly wasn't trying to take away from Rory's performance (read the rest of the unbylined AP story or the transcript), nor is it a knock on the maintenance effort. But he was merely pointing out how different this course is compared to typical U.S. Open setups.
"I've been a little disappointed with the golf course the last couple of days. It wasn't as firm and fast as I would like to have seen it," said defending champion Graeme McDowell, whose red-number contribution was a 69 that put him at even par going into Sunday. "The greens are soaking wet, and so are the fairways. It's target golf. It's not really a U.S. Open."
After the round the USGA's Tom O'Toole and Jeff Hall explained the USGA's position and defended the immaturity of the greens, saying that the inability this week to get the desired speed and firmness has nothing to do with their age. Not sure I can agree with that, especially based on Mike Davis's comments earlier in the week suggesting that the USGA would not push the greens to the point that they leave Congressional with dirt next week.
On behalf of those in the latter category, he offered this early in Rory McIlroy's third round in the U.S. Open on Saturday, following a hooked tee shot: "We're talking about thousands of inches on the bottom there. One-thousandth of an inch on a driver is 20 yards of hook."
Say what?
"If 1000th of an inch on a driver is 20yds were [sic] all in trouble," Paul Azinger wrote on Twitter.
For Joe Ogilvie, it summoned a memory of Johnny Carson's all-knowing character Carnac the Magnificent (though Ogilvie spelled it wrong in his hashtag).
"Johnny Miller to reveal name of the unknown soldier in tomorrow's telecast. #usopen #Karnak"
