Chamber of _______

The reader can fill in the blank, as it's the great unknown...

The guys that care about majors have actually listened to Mike Davis and found time to swing by Tacoma....earlier in the week we had this image of one of those guys:

Now, that's Joe LaCava with the luggage and I'm guessing Chris Como to Tiger's right.  Anyone know who else is in the entourage?  Is one Johnny Drama and the other Turtle?

Jason Sobel files this interesting piece on Tiger and Phil's prep, and they both have interesting takes on the the venue.  First up is the Striped one:

Davis recently said Chambers Bay will feature holes that can be played as both par-4s and par-5s; he revealed there will be tee boxes with sidehill lies; and he suggested that competitors will need several practice rounds in order to fully prepare themselves for the week. 

"When Mike says something like that, you've got to pay attention to it, because he's an extremely bright man," Woods said. "We got out there and it was like, oh, my God, there's so many different options here. You have to know. I don't take a long time in practice rounds, but we played in three and a half hours, just the front nine, had lunch, kind of sat down there and talked about it and played another three and a half on the back. So we spent a while."

Ya got that, 3 1/2 hours for nine holes....did he think he was at Willow Ridge on a Friday afternoon?

Tiger said he played it from the tips, which in this case is a gaudy 7.900 yards...of course Davis has no intention of setting it up to play anything like that yardage, but that's about the extent of our knowledge of his intentions.

Phil added this:

"I thought it was a very interesting golf course," Mickelson said. "I thought it was a modern-day links golf course, and everything about it was a British Open to me. The grass, the style, the shots needed -- I thought everything about it was a British Open. Nothing resembled your stereotypical U.S. Open and everything resembled a British Open."

And this, which let's us into the door of Phil's mind just an inch or so:

"I don't see it getting out of hand at all," he said. "I don't see the wind being as strong as a typical British Open. They won't be able to get the greens very fast, to where they're out of control. Certainly, there's a lot of contour, but around the hole where the pin placements are, they seem very fair. I really enjoyed it."

Anyone understand the basis of his meteorological predictions?  I don't usually consult SoCal guys on wind conditions off Puget Sound, but he seems very certain...of course he was quite sure that going for the green on No. 18 at Winged Foot made sense, so there's that.

In another ESPN item, Bob Harig picked up on this comment from Tiger:

"At Chambers, there's so many different landing areas and aggressive or passive lines, run the ball up, 40 feet, 50 feet, even sometimes 30 yards right of the green or left of the green, and it comes back 10 feet. It's a different type of golf course. We don't even see this in British Opens because they're not banked like this.''

Somehow Shack took that to mean that he didn't see the value in the ground game, but I'm struggling to see where that inference is sourced.  My vague memories of the 2010 Amateur are that they were using those slopes quite aggressively, but that was quite a few ywars ago and they did do some work based upon the play in that event.

Fox has provided flyovers of the holes which we'll share with you intermittently between now and Kickoff, with commentary provided by Holly Sonders and Gil Hanse.  I had no idea that Gil Hanse was a N.Y. Mets fan, so perhaps a few hours with Holly (despite her Dodgers hat) is just reward for a lifetime of suffering...

It's immediately clear hat this isn't your grandfather's U.S. Open, as the first and finishing holes will alternate pars, playing as a combined Par-9.  Weird yes, but it completely changes the landing areas and everything about the holes...

No. 2 is apparently an homage to the 14th at Royal Dornoch, though I'm clueless as to the nature of tribute.  Perhaps Mark W. r others that have experienced the joys of that golf holy ground can fill me in, because I see no common design elements between the two.

Hanse also introduces the so-called ribbon tees, which have already become controversial:

The third is the first one-shotter and Redanesque (Spellcheck thought I was going for Romanesque).  Shack had this to say:

A Redan offspring, the third at Chambers Bay appears (just going off the flyover) to be more of the second-at-Somerset variety of Redan than the the original. Meaning, the use of slope appears to be more from the hole-high slope than anything in front of the green. Though a similar depression fronts the original at North Berwick, it is fairly forgiving to a running shot.

Plus the hole will be played at 163-198 yards, meaning they'll have to trouble (unless directly into stronger winds than Phil expects) landing it hole-high.

And lastly, the inevitable story about a U.S. Open held in the state of Washington...let's just say that the headline writer didn't need to stay up nights writing this:

More than scores might be high at U.S. Open; pot sales in area are expected to soar

It's called ganjatourism, and local vendors may want to lay in some additional inventory per John Strege:

The notion that fescue was going to be the only grass garnering attention in the run-up to

the U.S. Open at Chambers Bay has gone up in smoke.

KCPQ, the Fox television affiliate serving the Seattle and Tacoma areas, reported on Monday that local marijuana shops expected a substantial boost to their bottom lines during U.S. Open week.

John also can't help himself and works a pot bunker into the piece...but pot smoking in public is still illegal in the state, so I'd go with the brownies...