Ross is over on the West Coast of America this week preparing for what is sure to be an exciting week on the Monterey coastline. The U.S. Open holds fond memories for Ross after his superb performance at Bethpage last year when he finished in 5th place only 2 shots behind eventual winner Lucas Glover.
“I played great at Bethpage last year and felt that I gave myself a great chance to win to be honest” said Fisher. “If I had holed a few more putts on Sunday I feel that I would have been in a very strong position. It gave me great confidence to know that I can compete at that level and I know that if I keep putting myself in that position, I am good enough to win a Major Championship”.
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“I had 4 solid performances in the Majors last year and gave myself a real shot at winning two of them – the U.S. Open at Bethpage and the Open Championship at Turnberry. However, I fully realize that you have to gain experience and ‘earn your stripes’ before you can expect to be in a position to win one of these things and that is what I am working towards”.
“I’ve not had the strong start that I would like to have had to the 2010 season, however I have been working very hard on my game in recent months and it is only a matter of time before the results start coming. This week at the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach would be a nice place to start contending again”.
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Fisher is aware that Pebble Beach is one of the “spiritual” homes of American golf, not so much because it was one of golf’s founding influences – it wasn’t – but rather for the type of championship it invariably provides whenever the USGA come calling every few years for the US Open.
Just how Tom Kite – the winner in 1992 – feels about being the odd man out is probably immaterial but, for sure, in producing winners of the calibre of Jack Nicklaus (1972), Tom Watson (1982) and Tiger Woods (2000), this famed and majestically located links on the Monterey peninsula, hard by the Pacific, has produced some of the sport’s greatest champions in an examination which is second to none.
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Each year at this second major of the season, the USGA set out with the philosophy to present the hardest test of any of the four majors. As Tom O’Toole, the championship chairman at Pebble Beach puts it, “the US Open should be the most rigorous, the most difficult and yet fair test in championship golf, an examination which tests both the players’ physical capabilities, which includes all shot-making, but also tests the players’ mental capabilities and tenacities . . . we can see well-executed shots rewarded, poorly executed shots penalised.
For the third year in a row, the USGA has brought the US Open to what is deemed to be a public links, following on from Torrey Pines (2008) and Bethpage (2009). Yet, there is a mystique about Pebble Beach which doesn’t resonate with the previous two venues. What is it? It’s location?
“It’s one of the special spots for golf, arguably one of the most beautiful spots in the world for golf. It’s everything about the place. It may not be where golf started in the US, but it is one of the spiritual homes for golf. It’s like a British Open at St Andrews. It’s one of those places that you put the US Open there, it only makes it better.
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At just 7,040 yards, it is one of the shortest courses on the US Open rota – and the shortest since Shinnecock Hills in 2004, which played ay 6,996 – and, for this fifth visit of the major, three holes have actually been lengthened substantially: a new tee on the ninth hole is 39 yards farther back (making it play 505 yards); the 10th has a new tee 49 yards back (bringing it to 495 yards) and the 13th has a new tee 39 yards back (extending the hole to 445 yards).
One of the other changes since Woods’s master class in 2000 – where he was a wire-to-wire winner and eventually had 15 strokes to spare on the field – has seen a decision to mow down the rough to the right of the sixth fairway alongside the cliffs.
One thing’s for sure, anyone teeing up at Pebble Beach will have a tingle down their spine. As Bill Perocchi, the chief executive of Pebble Beach put it recently, “(Pebble Beach is) one of the most spectacular spots on earth. It doesn’t get any better than this, does it? Pebble Beach truly is the greatest meeting of land and sea, and the tradition and history is unmatched by any golf course in the world. It’s hard not to get goosebumps and a special feeling when you drive through the gates on 17 Mile Drive.”
The Pebble Beach links is short by modern standards. But the USGA’s Mike Davis explains why he still regards it as the toughest test in championship golf; firstly, you have small greens; and, secondly, you’ve got a wind that hangs around all the time, for all four days.
The biggest concern for Davis and O’Toole is the wind. Anyone who has played Pebble Beach knows about the potential for howling gusts. Just ask those who competed at the 1972 or 1992 US Opens, which produced two of the highest final-round scoring averages in modern US Open history (78.8 and 77.3, respectively).
“I personally think setting up a golf course in windy conditions is the hardest thing to do,” says Davis. “If you are planning on a hole playing downwind, and it plays into the wind, you might set a hole location that’s unfair.
“You may have a forced carry off the tee that (the players) can’t make. So I think we run more risk at a place like Pebble Beach if a meteorologist misses it. We can look pretty stupid in situations that almost become unfair.”
As Davis adds: “In large part Mother Nature plays into just how tough it is, but nonetheless, when you look at that scorecard, you say, how can that really test the world’s best players? The answer is that this golf course is such a wonderful blend of short and long . . . what really makes this an extremely tough, but great test of golf is, first of all, the putting greens. They are absolutely the smallest greens in major championship golf. There’s no course I can think of on the British Open rota that are close to this size; obviously Augusta National greens are bigger; and I can’t think of a venue that the PGA of America has used (for the PGA Championship). So at least for the majors, this is by far I say by far – it really is the smallest greens we go to.”
Ross Fisher tees off on Thursday at 2.09pm (U.S. Pacific Time) with Louis Oosthuizen and Brad Snedeker. |
