Day One - Let The Recriminations Begin

There's a lot to sort through and not much time, so let's dispense with the formalities....

First, the perfunctory game story from Gary Van Cynical:

Chambers Bay is not a Chamber of Horrors after all on Day One of the 115th United

States Open. 

Somewhere, USGA tournament director Mike Davis breathed a sigh of relief. There were fears that this very modern and slightly controversial links-like new course might prove embarrassingly difficult for the world’s best golfers, but the man who kicked off this Open knew better. 

Local hero Michael Putnam, who grew up in nearby Tacoma and lives a mile-and-a-half from Chambers Bay, struck this Open’s first shot under partly cloudy skies at 7 a.m. He also called his shot. Chambers Bay was gettable, he predicted, and he was right on a lightly overcast, calm day. 

“Actually, I told my brother earlier in the week someone might shoot 6-under in the first round,” said Putnam, who shot even-par 70.

No six under, but a pair of fives...does that count?  Yes the course was gettable, at least for the morning wave.  Ben Martin at -3 seems to be the leader from the afternoon shotgun.

Now there were plenty of disasters, and Alex Myers apparently had them on the clock:

Well, that was fast. The first 30 minutes of the U.S. Open didn't produce a single birdie, but we already witnessed the first triple bogey of the week.

Welcome to Chambers Bay, Josh Persons. 

The 31-year-old Web.com Tour player started on the 436-yard, par-4 10th hole and made 7. Probably not the way he envisioned starting off his first time playing in the national championship.

 Didn't know that was a thing...Now is anyone surprised to hear that the course doesn't suit Bubba's eye?

UNIVERSITY PLACE, Wash. -- At some point we'll grow to appreciate Bubba Watson's transparency. When he's not happy on a golf course, you don't have to strain to notice. 

So it was Thursday at Chambers Bay, when Watson opened with double bogey and later made another, but still finished with an even-par 70. Cause for celebration? Not exactly. Watson was noticably irritated throughout the round, never more so than when he left his approach shot on the par-5 18th out to the right, and could be heard exclaiming, "This is pathetic. Professional golf!"

I caught their first hole on the streaming coverage and it was immediately fascinating.  Both Phil and Bubba blocked their second shots to the right and were left with the kind of delicate pitches from the rock-hard turf that send folks into retirment.  Phil threw caution to the wind and opened his 64-degree wedge wide open (he's using low-bounce wedges) and stiffed it.  Bubba tried to bunp it up there with a fairway wood, and they were nice enough to toss his ball back and let him give it another go.

And how about our Phil?  He's really working it as per this rationalization of his 3-putt bogey on No. 10:

For instance, after opening Thursday with a one-under-par 69, four shots behind the leaders, Mickelson even found something good to say about a three-putt bogey. It came at the 10th hole. You don’t really want to play the 10th at Chambers Bay. It’s called “High Dunes” because the fairway is threaded between giant sand dunes. Once you’ve found your way through that narrow gap, another dune at greenside gives the putting surface such a steep tilt that Mickelson, 30 feet from the cup, had a 50-foot putt. This takes some explaining. 

For one thing, he dare not hit the putt toward the hole. It might bleed so far left, down the slope, as to wind up in Tacoma. So he looked at a target spot up the incline, 20 feet above the hole. On that line, he hoped that the putt, when it lost momentum, would turn left and trickle down near the cup. Alas, the speed was two or three rolls short of perfect. The ball came to rest 10 feet below the hole. From there, Mickelson missed the par putt. 

“That was a pin that I had not spent time on, and I didn’t know high up the ridge I needed to go,” he said. “So I was guessing at the time . . .”

Not to worry, Phil, everyone was guessing out there.   but my Spidey-sense tells me that Phil let one get away.  he had the course under the best conditions they'll likely see all week, and -1 is just OK (see Stenson, H. and Johnson, D. for reference).

Before we get to the train wrecks, oh heck, I can't wait....first, some wistful memories of a galaxy far, far away...

Once, 15 summers ago, Tiger Woods won the U.S. Open by 15 shots. How many

Hard to see anything wrong in his finish...

centuries ago that must feel to him, a man now 39 years old. It must feel as if someone else did it in what was once his body. Once the lord of all he surveyed, Woods now is forlorn. Once triumphant, winner of 14 majors. Now, defeated.

As if seven bogeys without a birdie in the first 13 holes of this U.S. Open was not torture enough, Woods sent three shots into bunkers on the 14th and three-putted for a triple-bogey 7 that left him 10 over par and on the way to an 80, his worst Open round since a 77 as an amateur in 1996.

From winning a U.S. Open by 15 to being beaten by a fifteen year old by three...  we didn't quite make it to the end, so this had to be humiliating:

At the par-5 18th, he cold-topped a 3-wood second about 100 yards into a head-high pot bunker called “Chambers Basement.” Yikes.

I do hope the boom mics caught his reaction, which I'll wager was stronger than "Yikes"...

Though I do like this:

He even gave us a laugh line. “The bright side,” he said, “is that I kicked Rickie’s butt.”

Yikes squared.

Yes, he did at that.... and you'll be amused to know that Rickie was your humble blogger's pick to win...see, I'm humble for a reason.  We should note that Rickie shot 81 with an eagle!  And King Louie easily ran away with that featured grouping with a nice, tight 77.  These guys are good...except when they're not.

So, what did everyone think of our friends at Fox?  I'll riff off of Shack's lengthy rant, which carries this header:

Fox Sports Begins U.S. Open Coverage On Time, Telecast Also Mercifully Comes To An End

Our Geoff is a glass-half-full kind of guy.... I'll just say that they weren't as bad as I expected them to be, though that may qualify as the soft bigotry of low expectations...

The initial foray into golf broadcasting for Fox Sports was the mess you'd expect when a network is essentially debuting a new broadcast team during a Super Bowl spread out over several hundred acres. 

Much of the telecast sparingly used the innovations predicted or even could muster up basic graphics showing a player's name and score, elements we've come to expect in the 21st century. There were many ill-timed pre-packaged features or studio visits as key players were on the course. Yes, those players were at least viewable on the mostly good Featured Group and Featured Hole coverage, but after NBC's approach to the U.S. Open, the change was jarring.

Their vaunted new technology was nowhere to be seen.... lots of ProTracer for sure, but that's hardly new.  And a shout out to Golf Channel for using ProTracer on the range in their preview coverage...

But except for putting the yardage tags at the top of the screen, they didn't show me anything new...

A full-page leaderboard meltdown for a few early hours, later chalked up to a "global" issue by lead announcer Joe Buck even as scoring worked everywhere else on the property. Gaps in sound for surprisingly long periods were embarrassing and detracted by a strong effort on the sound side of the telecast.

These hiccups were to be expected.

I didn't see that meltdown as it happened while I was at the club hitting balls.  My gripe was that they had the small leaderboard in the lower right hand portion of the screen during the evening coverage, that included none of the players being shown.  

What wasn't expected: the narrow focus on name players and almost complete disregard for so many of the qualifiers who make the U.S. Open different than any other American event. They will be criticized for over-covering Tiger Woods, but the way in which he shot 80 warranted the attention he received. There was a brief interest in 15-year-old Cole Hammerwith a package of Hammer fending off questions to make us all feel old. It was cute, but not as fun as seeing shots played at the wild and wacky Chambers Bay, even if they were by people we don't know. One would think the USGA should be about telling the stories of not just the stars, but also core golfers who are getting a rare shot at history.

Shack had this update from a reader later:

**Reader Michael charted Fox's coverage and shared this...

--Fox showed 57 of the field's 156

--Players never seen in the top 10: Jason Dufner and Joost Luiten

--Notables not seen: Miguel Angel Jimenez, Richard Lee (U of Washington) Shane Lowry, Colin Montgomerie,

This is a highly subjective criticism, and I'm not going to rake them over the coals because they didn't show us Shane Lowry...

In defense of the cameramen, who lost a few balls in the air, it's very difficult to see a ball out here. The combination of gray skies and off-color turf is the culprit. 

There were certainly some fun shots from the Chase Cam (Chase Car once to Greg Norman), though the ones trying to show green contours seemed rushed.

The announcing was a mixed bag, with good energy and tone early on from all, but the long day appeared to catch up to the crew (though Norman offered some pointed analysis of Tiger late in the day before Joe Buck and Norman hit a wall and sounded exhausted). Curt Menifee seems totally out of his element, and maybe not even aware players don't get to choose their own tee times.

I thought the Chase Cam did a good job of showing contours through the green, and was pleasantly surprised by Fax and especially Corey Pavin.  Yes, Curt Menifee was an affirmative action hire, but the whole studio thing I found contrived.  

How many hours did Joe and Shark log?  Given that the three most important hours were the 8-11:00 EDT on the flagship station, they may have tried to do too much.

The fear of upsetting the USGA appears to be influencing the commentary, as the normally unrestrained Tom Weiskopf made a strong effort to hide his disdain for the course, only to not fool many viewers. Faxon and Flesch sounded comfortable and authoritative, as did Gil Hanse in a potentially awkward role of golf architecture expert. Former USGA Executive Director David Fay seemed underutilized after a briefly window with Tom Weiskopf, Buck and Norman. Charles Davis is yet another inexplicably bad interviewer while Holly Sonders seems woefully underutilized.Though she did get a nice hug from Phil Mickelson. 

Also, six minutes of current Executive Director Mike Davis on camera talking about the course setup, while Phil Mickelson and Rory McIlroy were in key portions of their round, only fuels the perception that Fox is efforting to appease their broadcast partners at the expense of viewers.

I didn't see the Davis interview, but I'm perplexed by Shack's criticism.... this is a unique venue with greater-than-normal set-up issues, so six minutes with Mike seems well-justified.  Now perhaps they mis-used the time, but I think we should hear from Mike every day.

I thought Gil Hanse was fairly good, though probably his role is poorly conceived.  Let him talk about architectural issues and not call holes, please... They rushed David Fay in when a player (sorry, I'm blanking on who it was) took an unplayable and didn't set the table properly.  Not sure that was David's fault.... but definitely an unforced error.

But fortunately Geoff did catch this gotcha:

So, the squiggle is over the only black guy on the set...coincidence?  If I've told you once I've told you a thousand times, I don't believe in coincidences...

Are they good?  Surely, not....are they better than they were for the Fourball broadcasts?  Yes, very much so...  If they continue to show improvement through the week, I think that's the best we can hope for.

Lastly, this story was inevitable:

Mac Barnhardt and Jimmy Johnston with Lagardere Unlimited confirmed to GolfChannel.com that they have retained a local caddie for the week to substitute in case one of their players’ caddies is injured or unable to work.

Why would they need back-up? 

Henrik Stenson, the world No. 6, has branded Chambers Bay “dangerous” after his

caddie and Stephen Gallacher’s bagman ended up in hospital because of on-course accidents during the final practice rounds for the US Open. 

Stenson’s caddie Gareth Lord is expected to appear for Thursday’s opening round despite a fall on the 16th hole on Wednesday, which resulted in a heavy strapping being applied to his wrist and a subsequent x-ray.

Shortly afterwards, Gallacher’s bagman Damian Moore fell when walking in rough on the 6th hole and twisted an ankle. Moore’s prospects of appearing for day one at the US Open are regarded as slim after a protective cast was placed on the injury.

Just wait until a player gets hurt...