Entries Open
|
With a group of brand new — and often strikingly different looking — venues cropping up, the USGA can look farther afield to hold its championships
 |
Updated: Mon 3/9/2009 6:53 pm
|
Where we stage our national championships can say a lot about the state of American golf. On that basis, Feb. 8, 2008, was an exceptional day.
It marked the awarding of the 2015 U.S. Open to county-owned Chambers Bay, a windswept, links-like, virtually tree-free golf course on Puget Sound near Tacoma, Wash. In the same announcement, the USGA declared that Chambers Bay would host the 2010 U.S. Amateur Championship and that another daily-fee jewel, Erin Hills in rural Wisconsin, a half-hour northwest of Milwaukee, would be the site of the 2011 U.S. Amateur. Erin Hills also hosted this year’s U.S. Women’s Amateur Public Links Championship, awarded even before the golf course had opened in 2006.
Two unheard-of golf courses. Two municipal owners. Two U.S. Opens, an Amateur and the WAPL. The message was clear: The USGA has changed its thinking.
But think about it, at least in terms of stroke-play national championships. A U.S. Open, for example, is a drama that unfolds in four acts (and sometimes in five, as we witnessed at Torrey Pines this year). Without a striking venue, you might not get the theater such an event deserves. “Chambers Bay marks the first time that we’re taking a U.S. Open to the Pacific Northwest,” says USGA President James Vernon, “and it is a very special site — an absolutely spectacular site.”
To read the entire article visit - http://www.usga.org/news/2009/january/usgaannual_newbreed.html
|
