Winged Foot, The Return

Hard to imagine it's been fourteen years since Phil hit that 18th hole drive just a little bit outside.  We'll get to that in a bit...

The club was formed in 1921 by members of the New York Athletic Club, from when derives its famous logo.  The club hired the most famous architect of his time, Albert Warren Tillinghast, and the rest is history.  This feature of five of Tillie's designs is worth your time, but this had to be the template for Winged Foot:

Baltusrol Golf Club SPRINGFIELD, N.J.

In 1918, when Tillinghast signed on to work with the club, Baltusrol already had a golf course—a two-time U.S. Open host, no less. And Tillinghast, an accomplished player in his own right, was well acquainted with it; it was where he lost to eventual champion Chandler Egan at the 1904 U.S. Amateur. Now the club wanted its 18 reworked. Tillinghast pushed for something bolder: Scrap the one course and build two in its place. In its scale and price tag, it was as audacious a proposal as the game had seen. But as a salesman and a showman, Tillinghast possessed “P.T. Barnum–like powers of persuasion,” says biographer Young. “If he really wanted to convince you of something, he could.” Baltusrol bit. It was later said that Tillinghast was the first architect ever to be given an unlimited budget. But that claim had the whiff of urban legend. And it was not the case at Baltusrol. In fact, he was given $100,000, which he blew through on his way to spending nearly twice that much to produce the club’s Upper and Lower courses. It was a grand achievement, and Tillinghast referred to it in grandiose terms: He took to calling himself the “creator” of Baltusrol. No doubt the work bolstered his renown. Among those who noticed were members of the New York Athletic Club, who had their own ambitious project in mind. They were looking for an architect to build 36 holes at a Westchester County club they would call Winged Foot.

The great man himself is on the right, with hands on hips.

Both courses at 'da Foot are revered.  As just a quick snapshot, Golf Digest's current rankings place the West Course at No. 11 and the East at No. 52, and both have been lovingly restored to their Tillie roots by Gil Hanse.  Of course it's the West that forms the Kinescope of our golf memories, from Bobby Jones through massacres and white flags and the like...  So, this might surprise:

The East Course

Since the first foursome teed off on June 16, 1923 (using a combination of holes from the East and West courses), debate has been waged over which of Winged Foot's two courses is better.

The East is ranked 34th on Golf Digest's list of America's 100 Greatest Golf Courses while the West checks in at No. 8, making Winged Foot the only private club in America with more than

one layout in the top 100. The East, generally thought to demand a wider variety of shots than the West, hosted the 1957 and 1972 U.S. Women's Opens, along with the inaugural U.S. Senior Open in 1980. A trio of water hazards and several rock outcroppings differentiate it visually from the West, and it offers less room off the tee. As on the West, deep greenside bunkers provide a stern test along with A.W. Tillinghast's putting surfaces, which can be brought up to bewilderingly fast speeds.

The 1929 U.S. Open was originally scheduled for the East Course but a severe storm damaged it to such an extent that the championship had to be moved to the West. Without that intervention from Mother Nature, Winged Foot's place in golf history might be much different.

Alas, I've never played the East, and have only played the West once.  

As is obvious from these items, we live in Tillie's back yard, close to the vast majority of his best work.  Golf Digest has an interactive feature that has me amused with their sense of comparables:

Let's see... we can play Winged Foot or Quaker.  But I hear that Bonnie Briar and Saxon Woods are just as good.  After all, they all have the same eighteen holes.  

Prior Installments - You could do worse than this guide to big-time events at the club:

U.S. Open 2020: A super-scientific ranking of Winged Foot's 11 previous major championships

Not just scientific, but super-scientific... It's Alex Myers with tongue firmly implanted in cheek, but in terms of significance this might be the most important:

4. 1929 U.S. Open

Star power: 7

Drama: 8

Historical significance: 7

Lasting images: 8

Total: 30

So much for the science... Here's the interesting bit:

Leave it to Winged Foot to have the most famous putt made on its hallowed grounds be for par.

Such was the case as Bobby Jones rolled in the putt of his storied career, a curling, downhill 12-footer with his famous flatstick, “Calamity Jane,” to get into a playoff with Al Espinosa. Look, there’s even an actual image of the crowd watching the legendary amateur putt on the 72nd hole. Jones would win the ensuing 36-hole(!) playoff by a whopping 23(!) strokes, so the “drama” gets docked a little. By the way, thank goodness the USGA ditched going to 36 extra holes and eventually got rid of the 18-hole playoff as well. Is there anything more anticlimactic? Anyway, on the bright side for Espinosa, because Jones was an amateur, he still got to take home the winner’s check—for a cool grand. Hope he didn’t spend it all in one place. Although, we hear that Montgomery Ward catalog was something else back in the day.

Also the scene of a Bobby Jones signature gesture.  Jones went to the head of the USGA and requested that the start of the playoff be pushed back to allow Espinosa to attend church (the Open was to have concluded on that Saturday, so the playoff was on Sunday).  Jones joined Espinosa at services, then displayed that complete absence of Christian charity on the course.

But if Alex is relieved at the absence of a 36-hole playoff, he should give thanks that he probably missed that 1931 U.S. Open at Inverness.  Billy Burke and George Von Elm were tied after their 36 hole playoff in that event, so logically returned the next day and played another 36, with Burke prevailing.

The Massacre - All you really need to know about '74 is a gentle reminder of cause and effect... The cause being Johnny Miller's 63 at Oakmont the prior year, the effect being...

Jim Colbert: Probably the hardest course of all time. No matter how hard the USGA sets up Winged Foot this year, there is no way it'll be as tough as it was in 1974.

Gary Koch: I got there Monday and played a practice round with Andy. Bean, my teammate at Florida who also qualified as an amateur. We got to the first tee, and Bert Yancey walked up and said, "Mind if I join you?" We said, "Sure." We both knew Bert, and he was kind of different. He hits it down the middle of the fairway and has a 6-iron to the green. The pin was front-center, and he hit it about 30 feet behind the hole and putted it right off the green. He turned around and walked right back down the fairway saying, "Where in the hell can I find a USGA official?" That's how the week started.

Steve Melnyk: I remember starting a practice round on the 10th hole with six balls in my bag. I hit two tee shots on 17 into the right rough and couldn't find either one of them, and I was out of balls. I hadn't hit one out of play, but I was done after 7½ holes.

Ted Horton: They had trouble finding their ankles, much less the golf ball. It kind of shocked the world.

The result of which was this famous Sandy Tatum quote, “We’re not trying to embarrass the best players in the world; we’re trying to identify them.” 

To which the world responded en masse, "Try harder."  Which, unfortunately, they did...

The Phil Phlop - That series of reflections was ironically published as part of Golf Digest's 2006 U.S. Open preview, and we have a similar piece on offer about that 2006 finish.  Highly recommended, as it reminded me of many moments long forgotten.

I've never jumped on the Johnny Miller bandwagon about driver off the tee being such a mistake.  It's true enough that Phil hit all of two fairways all day, so it's obviously a fair question.  But that of course begs the question of whether Phil would have hit the fairway with that 4-wood, so I think it's arguable.  Not similarly arguable is the decision-making in the woods left of the fairway, when Phil and Bones lost their bloody minds...

Golf Digest as a similar item in their U.S.Open preview print edition, but it's not available online.  They do offer this tease, in which Phil makes an obvious point:

Mickelson says Winged Foot was the “single greatest short-game performance of my career.”

“Otherwise I wouldn’t have been anywhere near having a chance to win the tournament,” said Mickelson who was extremely candid when recalling the week (sorry, can’t give away all the

good stuff here). “I struck the ball terribly, and to still have a chance to win the U.S. Open is simply mind-blowing to me, even to this day.”

It’s hard to disagree. In the final round, Mickelson hit just two fairways yet still led on the 72nd tee. As Ogilvy, who played in the group in front of Phil on Sunday, noted: “He had been hitting it onto the greens from the trees all day. I can’t recall how many times I looked back to see the spectators running into the trees to find his ball. Then, on the next tee, we’d hear the cheer when he somehow found the green with his next shot. He did it all day. Amazing.”

Doesn't that make it all the more inexplicable?  He's having the greatest short-game week of his career (a career defined by short game wizardry), yet felt compelled to go for the hero shot from the woods.  He obviously didn't like his chances of getting up-and-down from 100 yards, which has long puzzled me.  

Everyone's a Critic - John Huggan seems the type to never be happy:

HUGGAN: US OPEN? MORE LIKE “US AJAR”

Isn't that clever?  As anyone that has ever done a crossword knows, "ajar" means slightly open... And he can't go two sentences without undermining his header:

Just in case you haven’t heard, the major championship we all think of as the US Open won’t be happening this year. Not really. Which, I hasten to add, is understandable in these unprecedented times.

So, we've stipulated that it's understandable, but we're going to criticize it anyway?

John seems to clearly want a piece of the blue-blazer set, but see if you can follow this tortured logic:

First up – and assuming that the game is going to be fooled into anointing the winner, “US Open champion” – we need to go with quality. Yes, the touchingly off-beat tales that brighten the lives of every story-starved journalist early in championship week need to be part of the mix. But when was the last time someone you barely heard of won the US Open? Okay, you can have Steve Jones in 1996 and maybe Lucas Glover in 2009. But they are the exceptions. While the too-often too-extreme course set-ups have too-often worked against the identification of the most-talented players, most champions do tend to have at least some sort of profile.

Let me see if I have this straight.  The too-something set-ups have worked against identifying the best player, but not sufficiently to allow the qualifiers to be competitive?  So, you seem to be arguing that their set-ups should be even more extreme?

Look, the obvious point to make is that qualifying is a bit of fetish, at least among sports writers.  We all like it, but we all understand that it doesn't produce winners.  So while it's unfortunate that qualifying isn't part of this Open, most of us understand that that will not effect the proceedings...  

But even more troubling is that John Huggan is a Scot.  he can take all the potshots he wants at the USGA, as they have most of them coming.  But he might consider a brief pause to consider that Scotland-based governing body that chose to cash a big check in lieu of holding their Open.  John, it's not hardly a close call, but I prefer the USGA holding their "Ajar" to the R&A telling us that they simply can't be bothered... Do you have anything to say about Mr. Slumbers?

By way of contrast, Ulsterman Eamon Lynch sees the glass as...well, let's call a moratorium on tired analogies.  But Eamon seems to get it:

Typically, all of the majors have crowned champions and closed up shop by summer’s end (as the runt of the litter, in status if not in years, the PGA Championship has been shunted around the calendar from spring to winter). The Labor Day ledger for 2020 shows this: one canceled, one played, two pending. That accounting represents what we’ve lost, what we’ve saved, what theoretically remains in jeopardy.

Golf fans ought to feel a palpable sense of comfort in knowing that those two outstanding majors rest with the USGA and Augusta National Golf Club. There are no two bodies more devoted to continuity, both led by the kind of people who – to borrow E.B. White’s memorable phrase – wind the clock daily as a contribution toward order and steadfastness.

If all goes according to the (re)plan, the U.S. Open will begin Sept. 17 at Winged Foot’s West Course, just north of New York City. There’s a dandy symbolism in managing to stage the event in a region that only a few months ago was being ravaged by coronavirus, with more than 32,000 deaths. This 120th playing of the Open will be atypical, thanks to the absence of fans, infrastructure and the saccharine Father’s Day bromides to every man who ever sired. But in other ways, golf fans could have four days to relish the old normal.

Seriously. What better way to feel like the glory days are here again than an Open contested over a classic Northeastern course? One set up to extract its pound of flesh from participants. Where players start keening like an Irish banshee early in the week and don’t let up until it’s wheels up for their Gulfstreams on the journey home. In a year when we can’t seem to count on much, surely we can count on Winged Foot and the USGA?

Talk about the soft bigotry of lowered expectations... that the organization responsible for hosting the national championship would, in the face of a challenging environment, host the event as best it could, would seem to be the obvious step.  And yet, only one of our two governing bodies did so...

The Week in Preview - We'll just dip our toe into this pool here, first a quick look at the weather forecast:

I've been noting for a while that September is the perfect month for an Open in the Northeast, but that's simple as good a forecast as one could imagine.

A drone tour of WFGC can be found here.

Derek Duncan is a new name at Golf Digest, and he takes a crack at the seven most important shots on the West:

The approach at the par-4 opening hole

The sense of relief felt after finding the first fairway, with onlookers from the range and behind the tee, fades quickly when standing over the approach shot (and woe to those that aren’t in the fairway). The putting surface on No. 1 is one of the most severe in golf, with a massive upward tilt, a huge false front and distinct ridges and pockets on the interior. It’s entirely possible to find the putting surface and have almost no chance of two-putting if the ball is in the wrong location—ask Jack Nicklaus who putted off the first green in the opening round of the 1974 U.S. Open. You must be so precise with your second shot: Four pars here may pick up one or two shots on the field.

And this from one of their famous one-shotters:

The tee shot on the par-3 10th

Winged Foot West’s 10th hole is one of the most famous and feared par-3s in golf, and for good reason. Though not an island green, the severe bunkers that surround the putting surface—the deepest on the course—are about as hospitable as water and typically render a full-stroke penalty for those who hit into them. And with a 200-plus yard tee shot, that’s going to happen, frequently. Billy Casper famously laid up all four days at the par-3 third hole during his 1959 victory, but playing short or just to the front of this back-to-front sloping green might not be a bad strategy either.

 

Hogan famously said about this hole, “It is a 3-iron into some guy’s bedroom window.”  Playing at about 190-yards, these days it's more like an 8-iron into said window...

But nothing has generated more discussion than the famed Winged Foot rough.  At that '74 massacre, Johnny Miller, the guy that probably caused the high body count, said it was closer to a foot long in spots.  This year?

There’s a rumor going around.

Apparently, the USGA is concerned about the rough at Winged Foot, which a week before the 120th U.S. Open is dominating the pregame chatter. Steps may be taken ahead of the championship to dial it down a notch.

Right now, it’s well north of nuisance status.

“There were plans to just let it go after Sept. 3rd and just see if they could get it six inches on certain holes,” said Winged Foot member and NBC commentator Dan Hicks, who is back on the call Sept. 17-20. “I think all that is up for debate, as it always is. You don’t want to make it to where it’s an absolute jungle, but it is really thick.”

A tangled mess on either side of the picturesque fairways is a source of stress for some, a source of entertainment for others.

 Dialing it down is not in the USGA's DNA, so let's hope they let Winged Foot be Winged Foot.

Choking rough is often suggested as a way to control the beasts of elite golf, so lets' think of this as a test.  There's no reason, given the perfect weather forecast, that the greens can't be firm and fast.  If the greens are firm, the more interesting golf would be to allow balls to be advanced from the rough, with the resulting difficulty of controlling things after impact.

I'll post this today, then devote tomorrow to our typical wrap of the weekend's play.  We'll then have a couple of days, Tuesday and Thursday, to handicap players and get reactions to practice round play.