After Two Rounds at The Olympic Club Lake Course It Is Clear That We Have A REAL US Open and National Championship of American Golf On Our Hands! – The Lake Course Looks Great In the Hands of the USGA Staff and It Should Present A Great Challenge To the Players That Made the Cut Over the Weekend – A Morning Of Playing Golf Along the California Coast and Then On To the 3 rd of the US Open at The Olympic Club….It Doesn’t Get Much Better Than That! – Play Hard Boys….And THINK!
In the world of golf where one often finds at professional golf events meticulously manicured golf courses with hardly a thing out of place and deep green grass everywhere one looks it was rather enjoyable to look down from The Olympic Club clubhouse on Friday evening after the second round of the US Open and see a GOLF COURSE that has been supremely set-up by the United States Golf Association (USGA) and maintained perfectly, but not over-so by the Olympic Club maintenance staff.
Yes, the Augusta National is a beautiful golf course and a masterpiece of design that often looks like one big green carpet when gazing down on it from the AN clubhouse, but a GOLF COURSE should in our opinion not be perfect but rather as much a part of the natural landscape as possible such as one finds at some of our favorite golf courses in the world….
St. Andrews
Turnberry
Muirfield
Shinnecock Hills
Bethpage Black
Yale Golf Club
Pinehurst No. 2
Sand Hills
Bandon Dunes
Spyglass Hill
Pasatiempo
The Meadow Club
Now those are some GREAT golf courses and what the Olympic Club Lake Course is starting to look like after several days of the USGA setting up the course for a National Championship!
After the PGA Tour tournament that the USGA held at The Congressional Club last June in Washington DC instead of staging the US Open which decides the National Championship for Golf in America we have a REAL National Championship on our hands in San Francisco hard against the Pacific Ocean this week and all one has to do is look at the US Open Leaderboard after two rounds to realize that we do indeed have a “Championship” on our hands at The Olympic Club:
T1 – Jim Furyk – 1
T1 – Tiger Woods – 1
T1 – David Toms – 1
T4 – John Peterson + 1
T4 – Nicholas Colsaerts + 1
T4 – Graeme McDowell + 1
T4 – Michael Thompson + 1
Only 7 players at better than + 1 after two rounds….Now that is a US Open!
One thing about watching the US Open at a golf course you have played a lot you can see even the best players in the world making mistakes that they would never make if they knew the golf course a lot better and especially watching Phil Michelson play for two rounds on Thursday and Friday we have no doubt that if one of us had been able to give Phil just a few words of advice before each shot he hit of where he SHOULD NOT hit his golf ball we believe could have shot at least 7 shots better and that would have put him right at the top of the leaderboard after two rounds.
Memo to Phil Michelson: There is a place on EVERY hole at the Olympic Club Lake Course where you SHOULD NOT hit the ball and by our count over 36 holes you hit your ball in the SHOULD NOT hit it spot 26 times! Come on Phil….start using your brain off the tee and hitting into the greens and you will find that instead of having to make “40, 50 foot putts” as you said after your second round that a golfer has to do to make birdies on the Lake Course you will be able to get the ball a lot closer to the hole on your approach shots if you put your tee shot in the proper section of the fairway. The founder of IBM Thomas Watson had a great saying that he told his employees all the time about how to go about their work at IBM which would be wise words for Phil Michelson at The Olympic Club…
THINK
With the final group of Tiger Woods and Jim Furyk not teeing off on Saturday until 3:05 PM that gives us a chance to get in a round of golf in the morning and we will be heading down the beautiful California coast for a little Pacific Ocean-side golf before taking in the 3 rd round of the 2012 US Open.
As for our humble advice for the players that made the cut in the US Open and will be playing on Saturday….
Play Hard Boys….and THINK.
