Winged Foot Golf Club, one the other hand, is in a strange limbo. Today was supposed to be the first round of its sixth US Open, and the forecast is so good it hurts. Low 30s and sunny all week throughout the New York area, dropping into the mid-teens at night, continuing through the weekend. Goddamn perfect weather for swollen rough, fairways that run 100 kilometres an hour and the way a summer drink would taste under blue skies while watching today’s best golfers interpret the same West course where Bobby Jones, Billy Casper, Hale Irwin, Fuzzy Zoeller and Davis Love III (PGA Championship) won. Even when Geoff Ogilvy (almost Phil Mickelson) survived the field in 2006, golf was a different game. There aren’t any pros built like Colin Montgomerie anymore, who also coughed it away on the 72nd hole that year.
How will The Foot hold up against the new breed of bombers? Will Dustin Johnson be able to fit his cut-drive over the trees on the dogleg-left fifth hole, which has been converted to a par 4. Who will take on the new Shamrock bunker from the back tees at the 14th? Who has the touch for the knuckled greens, which were soggy and slow in 2006. We’ll have to wait for the unusual date of September 17-20, likely without fans, to find out. Three months might not seem like much, but these answers are pressing because a lot has happened at Winged Foot in the past decade, including a major restoration by Gil Hanse and the tenure of superintendent Steve Rabideau, who is as brilliant a grassman as anyone in the bar can remember.
Rabideau is also a bit ornery. The tuning of the golf course for this specific week has been his priority numero uno since he took the job. The rough on the West, a blend of rye and bluegrass and poa annua, just popped. Like magic, it’s twice as thick as the rough on the neighbouring East course. How will it survive the hot summer? Sitting in a cart, Rabideau exhales smoke from his cigar with a faraway look. Come autumn, the grass blades will inevitably thin to produce both good lies and bad lies in the rough. Right now, they’re all bad, which is good, even at two inches height.
The members of Winged Foot are a prideful bunch and everyone agrees the course would’ve looked awesome on TV this week (I happen to be one of these members; I’ve overachieved in the club department). But September can be glorious, too, albeit in a different way, with crisp mornings and the foliage just starting to turn.
Will Mickelson be there to avenge his 2006 meltdown? The USGA now faces the unenviable job of creating a US Open field without qualifying. Mickelson is ranked 66th in the world this week and has said he won’t accept a special invitation. So maybe top 70 get in instead of top 60 sounds appropriate?
Other than two minor staging platforms, there is no stadia or much of anything currently built at Winged Foot. Just two empty courses and a variable breeze of feelings coming from many directions. While the prospect of no fans means a deflated atmosphere and a serious financial blow from the loss of corporate-tent sales, a silver lining is the East course will be spared its usual damage from tractor trailers, port-a-loos and other notorious feet-draggers. And like any golf course right now, the regulars are simply happy to have a place to play coming out of quarantine. For the first time in the club’s nearly 100-year history, a strict online tee-time reservation system is in place to prevent the traditional method of groups social gathering around the first tee to establish play order. And with the weather so good and people working from home, you’d better believe the timesheet is packed.
Of course, the fortunate membership of Winged Foot Golf Club knows that concern over matters like rough height and green firmness is a trivial privilege amid everything else going on in America. Many are in positions to help solve the inequities that exist in society, especially when the hiring freezes begin to thaw.
Today was supposed to be the first round of the US Open. But there’s really only one way you might know. The American flag by the clubhouse is flying at full staff for the first time in many months.
