It wasn’t until 2001 that the idea that Torrey Pines could host a U.S. Open first became a serious notion in anyone’s mind. After the USGA had awarded the 2002 Open to Bethpage Black, making it the first municipally owned golf course to host an Open, members of the Century Club, which operates Torrey Pines, began to wonder if they could do the same thing.
“They came to us and said they were going to have Rees [Jones] do a redesign, and they wanted to know if we would consider awarding them an Open,” said USGA executive director David Fay, who had spearheaded the move to play the Open at Bethpage. “We told them we would of course consider it, but we didn’t make any guarantees. To their credit, they were willing to go out and spend the money without being promised anything in return.”
Rees Jones, the son of famed golf course designer Robert Trent Jones, has become known in recent years as “the Open Doctor.” If a golf course wants to apply to host an Open, or if it wants to prepare for an Open after being awarded one, Jones is the architect usually brought in to do the work. Torrey Pines was the eighth redesign he did with an Open in mind. His first redesign for an Open course was at the Country Club in Brookline, Massachusetts, in 1988. Fay had asked Jones to do the redesign at Bethpage Black as part of his plan to bring the Open there.
“Bethpage Black was a different situation, though,” Fay said. “The deal we made with the State of New York was different than anything we’d ever done before. Bethpage was a great golf course in poor condition. We agreed to pay to both redesign it and get it into great shape again as the rental fee for 2002. Rees did the redesign of Bethpage for nothing because I told him it was the right thing to do and because he knew he’d get a lot of positive publicity out of it. In San Diego, they paid Rees to do the work before we committed to anything.”
What was working in Torrey Pines’s favor was the well-known fact that Fay very much wanted to continue the new trend of awarding the Open to municipal golf courses. The fact that there was a second golf course on the property that could be used for things like corporate tents and parking and the USGA’s massive souvenir tent also factored in Torrey Pines’s favor.
Working against it was the fact that it already hosted a PGA Tour event. Generally, in picking golf courses, neither the USGA nor the PGA likes to go to golf courses that have an annual tour event. “But there was precedent because of Pebble Beach,” Fay said. “We’d played at Pebble four times in the past after the tour event there. It also helped that the conditions in June would be very different than in January.”
And so it was that Torrey Pines was awarded the ’08 Open late in 2002. The announcement was greeted with mixed enthusiasm in the golf world. Everyone understood the idea of going to another municipal course. But Torrey Pines didn’t have the same cachet as Bethpage Black.
“Most of us had never played Bethpage when it was awarded,” said longtime tour player Paul Goydos, who had grown up playing on a municipal course in Long Beach, California. “But we knew of it. We knew its reputation, and when we got there it more than lived up to that reputation. Torrey Pines is an okay golf course, but I don’t think anyone would put it in the same category as Bethpage.”
The USGA was well aware of that fact. “We all knew that Torrey Pines didn’t appear on any list of the top hundred golf courses in the country,” said Mike Davis, who would be responsible for setting up the golf course before the championship began. “But we also thought it had a lot of things going for it: We need more West Coast venues — among other things it is great for TV because we can finish so much later. It’s very scenic, with all the water that is around it. And we thought with the Rees redesign and some time to put our stamp on it, we could make it a golf course the players would enjoy playing an Open on. At least we hoped so. I’d be lying if I told you any of us thought it was a slam dunk.”
The Jones redesign lengthened the golf course by about four hundred yards and added a number of wrinkles to it. Most players liked the changes, although some thought the course had been stretched out too much — as is frequently the case these days with Open layouts.
One person who had never been crazy about Torrey Pines was Rocco. “I had just never played well there,” he said. “I’m not even sure I can tell you why, but I hadn’t. I was hoping that it would play harder and faster in June than in January and that the USGA’s setup would benefit me. Their emphasis is always on making guys keep the ball in the fairway, and that usually works well for me.”
In truth, the USGA’s demand that players keep the ball in the fairway had changed somewhat. Davis had taken over most of the course setup responsibilities from Tom Meeks in 2005. Meeks, with the approval of Fay and the USGA board, had always taken the approach that a hazard was a hazard, and that included both the rough and the bunkers.
At most PGA Tour events, if a player barely misses a fairway, he will more often than not have a lie that allows him to get his club solidly on the ball and, often as not, put spin on it when it lands on the green. At a lot of tour courses, the bunkers are so smooth and so perfect that players barely notice that they’re dealing with sand at all.
That’s never been so at the Open. Some bunkers provide relatively simple shots; others can be close to impossible. When Tim Morgahan was the USGA’s agronomist, his answer when players complained to him about the quality of the bunkers was simple: “If you don’t hit your ball in there, you won’t have a problem. They are supposed to be hazards, aren’t they?”
The same is true of the rough. Under Meeks, a player could hit a ball a few yards off line and be lucky to find it. Most rough at a U.S. Open was what is called “pitch-out rough.” In other words, find the rough and very often your only shot was a pitch-out back to the fairway.
After players went ballistic over the setup at Shinnecock in 2004 — which had as much to do with the speed of the greens on Sunday as anything else — the USGA decided to make some changes beginning in 2005.
One change was to “graduate” the rough. If a ball was a yard or two off the fairway, a player was likely to have a shot at the green. If he was in the middle of the rough, it was tougher, and if he was way off line he probably would find himself pitching out.
“I think it took us until this year [2008] to actually get it right,” Davis said. “The first few years we weren’t as consistent as I’d have liked us to be. Some holes were just right, others weren’t. I thought this year was as close to getting it right as we’ve come.”
Davis was also more likely to water greens that looked like they might be baking out than had traditionally been the case in the past. That had been the major cause of all the trouble at Shinnecock. The greens had been very fast on Saturday and with dry, windy weather predicted for Sunday, watering made sense.
“The golf course was right on the edge today,” Nick Price said after the third round. “If they don’t get water on it tonight, it’s going to go over the edge.”
They didn’t get water on it. That led to the embarrassing sight of holes being watered during the final round, an order that came down from on high after several players in early groups putted balls off the seventh green.
“We blew it,” Fay said later. “We always like to have our courses right on the edge, but the danger in that is that if you go over the edge, there’s no turning back. We went over that edge and there wasn’t time to fix the problem. You can’t have that during the last round of the U.S. Open.”
Even though the winning scores in 2006 (six over par) and 2007 (five over par) at Winged Foot and Oakmont respectively were very high, there were few complaints about the setups. “They were just very hard golf courses,” said Jim Furyk, who finished one shot behind the winner both years. “They weren’t unfair, they were just very, very hard.”
That was what the USGA was hoping for at Torrey Pines — hard but fair. USGA officials like to claim they really don’t care what the winning score is at the Open, but the fact is they protect par like the Secret Service protects the president. When Tiger Woo
ds shot 12 under par at Pebble Beach in 2000, there was near-panic at USGA headquarters in Far Hills, New Jersey. The only thing that kept everyone semi-sane was the fact that no other player in the field came close to breaking par. Ernie Els finished second — 15 shots behind Woods at three over par.
“I think the feeling was that we’d simply witnessed one of the great performances in golf history,” Davis said. “The golf course held up fine. If ten other players had been under par, it might have been different.”
Even though the players routinely complain about how tough the golf courses are, they too have come to expect Open courses to be difficult. In 2003, when Furyk and Vijay Singh were the 36-hole leaders at Olympia Fields at seven under par and a total of eighteen players were in red numbers at that stage, there was much whining from the players about the fact that the course was playing like a regular PGA Tour venue. “Doesn’t feel like an Open,” was the oft-heard complaint.
The USGA agreed. The golf course was much tougher on Saturday, and with the hole locations in the hardest possible spots on Sunday, the entire field went backward. By the time it was all over, only four players — Furyk, Stephen Leaney, Mike Weir, and Kenny Perry — were under par. Even so, the consensus was that Olympia Fields really didn’t have what it took to be an Open venue.
“The key is finding just the right spot between hard [and] impossible,” Fay said. “A lot always depends on the weather conditions and how you adapt the golf course to suit them. I think we’re getting a little better each year. At the very least I would make the claim that we’ve learned from our mistakes.”
Most players arriving at Torrey Pines prior to the 2008 Open were very happy with what they found. Some thought the new tee on the par-four sixth hole, which made the hole play 515 yards, was too far back — Phil Mickelson called it “ridiculous.” Others wondered about the wisdom of finishing an Open on a par-five. Most often, the Open ends on a long par-four where making a par to win can be difficult.
That had never been more evident than at Winged Foot in 2006, when Colin Montgomerie and Mickelson each stood on the 18th tee needing a par to do no worse than playoff (Montgomerie) or win (Mickelson), and both made double bogeys.
The USGA had swerved away from this tradition once in recent years, in 1997, when the 18th hole at Congressional Country Club was a par-three. In the past when tournaments had been played at Congressional, the par-four 17th had been played as the 18th hole, but Fay thought a par-three with water might make for a dramatic finish. He was wrong. Players in contention simply played an easy middle-iron to the center of the green and happily took a par. The tournament was decided on the 17th hole, when Tom Lehman found the water and Montgomerie (poor guy) made a bogey, allowing Ernie Els to beat them.
“We thought a risk-reward par-five could make for an exciting finish,” Davis said. “You get guys standing on the tee with a chance to make anything from three to six, and it should add to the suspense. It was a reachable par-five but only if you hit a good drive.”
ROCCO HAD GONE HOME to Florida for a few days after qualifying for the Open, and he flew to San Diego on Saturday morning. His plane landed around lunchtime, and he went straight to the golf course to meet Matt Achatz.
“I wasn’t at all tired,” he said. “I was very pumped up to be there. I didn’t want to hit balls or anything. I just wanted to change my shoes and go play a few holes. I was walking down the path from the locker room to the first tee and I ran into Mike Davis. We talked for a couple minutes, he congratulated me on making it in, and I kept going. I decided it was some kind of omen running into him, that I was going to like the golf course.”
If he was looking for omens, the next one wasn’t nearly as good. When he walked onto the first tee and pulled his driver out of the bag, the head came off it. “Something must have happened on the plane,” he said. “I freaked out completely. I had driven the ball so well at Memorial and the thought of having to find a new driver the week of the U.S. Open just about made me crazy.”
At most tournaments, the equipment reps and their trailers don’t arrive until Monday morning. For a major, they get to town earlier. Rocco found a Callaway rep and asked him if he could build a couple of new drivers for him to try out. “I didn’t know what to think,” he said. “I was hoping they could come up with something that would feel similar to the driver I’d been using.”
Once he got back on the golf course, Rocco didn’t stay very long. “It was just so windy,” he said. “The chances were good, at least I hoped, that it wasn’t going to play that way once the tournament began. I gave up after seven holes. I was tired from the trip, I knew I needed to get on the range and figure out what to do about my driver, and the wind made playing pretty worthless in terms of getting a feel for the golf course. I decided I’d be better off getting out of there, getting a good dinner and some rest, and then coming back in the morning.”
He checked into the players’ hotel, a Hilton located a few hundred yards from the golf course. He called Lee Janzen, who was in the field because 2008 was the tenth year of the ten-year exemption he had earned by winning the Open in 1998 at the Olympic Club. They decided to get out early the next day and try to play 18 holes.
Rocco was at the golf course early on Sunday morning. The Callaway people had taken the shaft from his old driver and built a new driver from it. “I hit it on the range for a little while, and it felt almost exactly like the old one,” he said. “It was a huge relief. By the time Lee and I teed it up, I felt pretty good about things.”
They played the entire course in a twosome, which is unusual for a practice day at the Open. Often as not, players will join up with one another on the golf course. But on Sunday, there still weren’t that many players on the grounds, and Janzen and Mediate had most of the course to themselves.
“It was spectacular,” Rocco said. “The weather was gorgeous and the course was almost empty. I think we might have seen five spectators the whole day out there. [The USGA doesn’t let spectators onto the course until Monday, so anyone on the golf course on Sunday was a tournament volunteer or a USGA staffer.] It was great to play with Lee, since we hadn’t seen each other for a while. It was a good day all around. I felt good.”
Janzen noticed. “He was hitting the ball well, which never surprises me,” he said. “Rocco hitting the ball well isn’t news. When he isn’t hitting the ball well, you wonder if something is wrong, because as long as I’ve known him he’s been able to fall out of bed and hit the ball well.
“The question is always his putting. That day he was rolling the ball very well. He made a bunch of putts but, more important — after all, we can all make putts in practice — he looked very comfortable to me with the short putter. I don’t think I’d seen that for a while.”
Rocco was just as aware of how he was putting and hitting the ball. Given a chance to play the golf course in less than gale-force winds, he felt comfortable almost from the start. “I just felt like Mike [Davis] had really nailed it with the setup,” he said. “It definitely felt a lot different than it did in January. Everything was faster — the fairways, the greens. They had the ability to make 14 play as a driveable par-four if they wanted, which I’d never seen at an Open before except for the 17th at Oakmont, where they had no choice but to play it that way.
“The new driver felt good and that was a huge relief. I’d been really concerned about it on Saturday. And I was putting the ball well. I liked the greens right away, although I said to Lee, ‘You can bet these things will be faster by Thursday than they are now.’ ”
Green speed is always an issue, especially at the Open and at the Masters. The greens at Augusta National are so notorious that their speeds are considered a state secret. The speed of a green is measured by a very simple instrument called a Stimpmeter. For all intents and purposes, it is an angled piece of wood from which a ball is rolled. How far the ball rolls on the green is how fast the green is considered to be running. If the ball rolls five feet, the green
is a five. If it rolls ten feet, it is a ten. And so on.
At most PGA Tour events the green speed is usually — again, depending on weather — somewhere between 11 and 12. Anything slower is considered too easy and anything over 12 too fast. There are players who insist that the greens at Augusta National are consistently kept at 14, perhaps even higher.
“I’ve seen them 15, maybe even 16, at Augusta,” said Brad Faxon, generally regarded these days as the tour’s best putter not named Tiger Woods. “Honestly, there are times when you roll a putt and you know you have no chance of the ball stopping unless it hits the hole square in the middle. It can be frightening.”
The USGA doesn’t go that far, but it does like fast greens. “Generally speaking, we don’t want to get to 14, but we’re okay at 13,” Mike Davis said. “It’s a balancing act all week. We do keep them a little bit slower for the practice rounds, not because we’re trying to fool the players but because we know if we get them too fast too early in the week they might get away from us on the weekend. The players know that a green isn’t likely to putt on Thursday or Friday the way it did on Monday or Tuesday. We try to move the speed up gradually so it isn’t a shock to anyone when the championship starts.”
Rocco was fully aware of the fact that making putts on Sunday was going to mean very little on Thursday. But he felt good — very good — after he had finished his round with Janzen.
“It just all felt as if it was coming together exactly the way I would have hoped it would leading into an Open,” he said. “I liked the golf course, I was hitting the ball well, and I felt comfortable rolling the ball on the greens. I had played well at Memorial and in the qualifier. The back felt good. I really felt like I had a chance.”
Are You Kidding Me?: The Story of Rocco Mediate's Extraordinary Battle With Tiger Woods at the US Open Page 16
