The Open

They’ve begun play in the Championship round of The U.S. Open.  Like The World Cup, the U.S. Open we see on TV is really the final round (or four rounds) of a tournament that began over a month ago (in soccer’s case we’re in the tournament now that concludes next summer).  The part I like best about this is neither that the courses make the best golfers in the world look like..uh..me nor the history.  What I like the best is that I can play.
You knew that, right?  If you have a 1.4 USGA handicap index or better (OK, I don’t), or are  professional golfer you can enter.  This year, 9,086 folks did just that, the youngest of which was 13-year-old Matthew Lowe of Farmingdale, Long Island while the oldest was 78-year-old Ordean Olson of Hollywood, Florida.  Most entrants have to go through local qualifying and then sectional qualifying to make the field.  That includes a lot of tour pros who don’t automatically make the field.

This year, The Championship is being played on a public course, Bethpage Black.  How great it that – anyone can enter a tournament played on a course anyone can play?  Which is kind of what makes golf such an interesting game.  While I know the conditions are different (everything from the length of the rough to the pressure of competition), in theory I can go play the same course as the pros and see how I fare.  I don’t know of anything like it in sports.  What becomes clear if you’ve ever tried to do that (and I have, actually), is how much better the pros are.  Tiger made a crack a couple of years ago about a very good player not being able to break 100 on a course set up for an Open and since then some very good, famous amateurs have tried.   They did, in fact break 100 but not by much.

Which is today’s business point.  While what folks do may seem easy to those who think they have the same skills, the reality is that we might not break 100.  To me the measure of the consummate professional was Joe DiMaggio (you youngsters can look him up).  He made incredibly difficult catches seem easy.  As Wilfred Sheed wrote, “In dreams I can still see him gliding after fly balls as if he were skimming the surface of the moon.”  Like the pros will do this weekend, taming really challenging conditions while making it look routine is the mark of the best.

Are you going to watch the Open?  Who’s going to win?