Recipe for trouble


The daunting rough at Torrey Pines South lies waiting for Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and the rest of the U.S. Open field.
The daunting rough at Torrey Pines South lies waiting for Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and the rest of the U.S. Open field. — K.C. Alfred / K.C. Alfred/Union-Tribune

Forget Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson.

Angels and Demons. Those are the ultimate rivals in the U.S. Open.

Every golfer will step to the tee at Torrey Pines come Thursday, and there will be two voices buzzing in his head.

The Angel will tell him that he is about to partake in the world's most demanding golf championship, and that he has the ability to withstand all of the intentional obstacles and the fickle fortune thrown his way.

He will get outrageously bad lies in the rough, be required to hit shots he never dreamed of practicing, see putts that defy the laws of gravity.

"You can handle this," the Angel will say.

The Demon will tell him that he is not worthy of this test, that he should be home on the couch, that the course is unfair, that the U.S. Golf Association is composed of wicked sadists who are out to ruin and embarrass him.

"Run for your life!" the Demon will say.

That's the U.S. Open. Love and Hate. Fight or Flight. The emotions can change in the blink of an eye.

"I just love the way," mused Charles Howell III, "that they make you walk the line between looking like a total idiot and showing who is truly the best."

Not a competitive ball has been struck on Torrey Pines' South Course for the 108th U.S. Open, and this can be guaranteed: There are players who have no chance to win this week. Not because they lack the skill, but they've already psyched themselves out.

"The mechanical abilities of this game are not hard to come by if you don't do anything but play," said Frank "Sandy" Tatum, an 86-year-old past president of the USGA. "But what makes this game so absolutely, compellingly fascinating is the mental side of it.

"The combination of course setups and what (the U.S. Open) can mean to a player's career if he wins ... those don't exist anywhere else. That combination serves a useful purpose in identifying who is the best."

Over his four victories and 38 years in the U.S. Open, Jack Nicklaus saw it in his opponents' eyes, felt it as he sampled their whine.

"There's a lot of fellas who show up on Monday of the tournament and they are scared of the rough," Nicklaus recalled recently. "They yell about the height of it. They yell about the firmness of the greens. They yell about this and they yell about that. And by the time Thursday rolls around, they're so wound up about everything that's wrong, they can't do anything right."

Never in golf is there more bellyaching than at the U.S. Open. The suffering can be the best part of the show. Many fans love it because they get to see their idols play like mortals for a week.

The USGA believes, unapologetically, that its championship must be the ultimate examination of a player's game, from his ability to keep the ball in the fairway and strike precise iron shots, to possessing a stroke deft enough to putt on tilted glass.

"The challenge is well-defined," said former player and NBC commentator Roger Maltbie. "Your job as a player is to swing well enough to keep the ball in between the jungle on the left and the jungle on the right."

Some guys relish the challenge.

"You've got to love being out there," said reigning Masters champion Trevor Immelman. "You've got to love the adversity of just every shot being one of the toughest you'll ever have to hit."

Others dread it. Reporters' notebooks have been filled through the years with the venom players have spewed about the "Open setup."

Dave Stockton: "If the USGA could put lakes in the middle of every green, they would."

Art Wall: "The Open is the World Series of golf, and the baseball people don't put rocks in the infield in the World Series."

Five-time major winner Seve Ballesteros: "Sure it's a major. But it's not a good tournament because 80 percent of the game in the U.S. Open is about hitting the fairways. It takes away the skill factor.

"Everyone wants to compete in the U.S. Open, but when they get there, they hope the week would end quickly."

Of course, the Spaniard's wild driving sent him on more explorations than Cabrillo, so he never came close to winning the U.S. Open.

Still, as long as U.S. Open courses have been fashioned by the USGA to be intentionally tough -- and that dates at least to 1951 and "The Monster" of Oakland Hills -- players have accused the USGA of ulterior motives. One of the most popular is that a body that governs mostly amateur golf tournaments doesn't mind rubbing the pros' faces in the ample rough once a year.

Frank Beard, an 11-time PGA Tour winner from the '60s, wrote in a Golf Digest column: "I can take any course in the world and trick it up so nobody can break 100, but the object isn't to keep the scores as high as possible. It's almost as if the Open has boiled down to a contest between the pros and the USGA."

Some of the trouble through the years is that the players have been justified in their complaints. With its extreme setup, the USGA walks a tightrope wearing ice skates. It takes only one variable to go haywire and produce chaos.

In '98 at the Olympic Club, the severe placement of the 18th hole on Friday drew angry comparisons to putt-putt golf. At Bethpage in '02, on a rainy and windy Friday, the par-4 10th required a 270-yard carry to a 30-yard-wide fairway lined with tall fescue. The players were a tad miffed.

Probably the best example of a setup gone wrong is 2004 at Shinnecock Hills. A faulty forecast led to no water for the greens as the wind howled Saturday evening, and by Sunday morning they were nearly dead. The first three players triple-bogeyed the most affected green at No. 7, and there, Kevin Stadler lipped out a 2-foot putt and his ball eventually trickled into a bunker.

Tom Meeks, the USGA's setup chief at the time, later said he seriously considered the unprecedented move of calling off the round and starting over. Instead, the greens were watered during the round, to the dismay of the players who had already suffered.

"When are they going to grow a head?" the excitable Jerry Kelly ripped afterward. "Get off your high horse and be good to the game. It's an ego contest."

It is anything but, insists Mike Davis, the current USGA director of rules and competitions. Thoughtful and soft-spoken, Davis is about as far from playing the villain as a human can get. He says "gosh" a lot and his voice and mannerisms suggest a '50s TV dad.

"I just want us to do everything we can to make it a really stern test," Davis said. "But I don't want it to become unfair."

With a minuscule margin for error, Davis says mistakes are going to happen.

"I guarantee you that in the future I will screw up," Davis, 43, said. "You think about it, and know that it will be awful when it happens. But you don't try to make excuses. You admit to it, and you hope the players and the golf world will forgive you."

Davis took over for Meeks in 2006. He introduced several new wrinkles to the Open setup: "graduated" rough that should penalize the most wayward shots; alternating tee boxes to present different challenges; and a stated goal of having the course play the same in practice rounds as it does for the tournament.

The result of his first two setups: Geoff Ogilvy (Winged Foot) and Angel Cabrera (Oakmont) each won at 5-over -- the highest winning scores since Hale Irwin's 7-over victory in the 1974 "Massacre at Winged Foot."

This is the kinder and gentler USGA?

Davis laughed.

"The point is absolutely spot-on," he said, before admitting he might have underestimated the thickness of the rough at both venues. "But if you look back at the comments, I think they were consistently, 'Wow, this is a hard, hard golf course, but fair.'"

At the end of the week, it is Davis' hope the players are saying that about Torrey Pines, the longest course in U.S. Open history, a track Mickelson has called the hardest in the world.

What possible pratfalls await Davis and the players at Torrey?

He will keep a sharp eye on the par-5 13th and the 614-yard back tee that requires a 240-yard carry over a canyon. The players were criticizing that one months in advance.

He will have his finger in the air to test the ocean breeze. Davis desperately wants some wind this week, but too much would make holes such as the 504-yard, par-4 12th pure torture.

Davis already has taken considerable measures to keep cutting the stiff, wiry kikuyu rough so it doesn't become impossible, yet it still figures to have the biggest say in who wins this Open. He has surmised that it could be inconsistently penal.

"Part of me thinks that's pretty neat," Davis said. "Who said the thing is supposed to be consistent? A guy's going to have to look down at his ball and try to figure out what's going to happen."

We know what will happen. The golfer examines the half of the ball he can see. The Angel whispers "punch out." The Demon demands, "Go for it!"

And in that drama lies the beauty of the U.S. Open.