Oakmont: that’s where I
am off to next in my golf ramblings.
If you are not familiar with that name and what’s happening on the
surface of this little slice of the planet, stop reading now. You are not in love with the game of
golf. Be gone…pretty please
because I was brought up to be polite.
My heart wants Rory to
win. He’s from my home turf and knows his shamrocks from his clovers.
He’s at home on the forty shades of greens (Thank you, Johnny Cash, for
this earworm song that has haunted my young life and still drives me nuts) but,
somehow, his putting is reminiscent of the erratic weather-scape of the Emerald
Isle– sashaying swings from sunshine to belligerent rains in any hour of any
day. If you believe in prayer,
it’s time to send one up to St Jude who is the dual patron of hopeless cases
and – wait for it – golfers. Give
it a go but be warned: Rory did not perform well in his most recent outing at –
wait for it again – St Jude Classic!
I’m rather warming to
the Dustinator, aka Dustin Johnson.
He’s looking smoother these days in his approach to his game. Nobody ever doubted his ability to
drive but his putting has been way too short for his level of game and enough
to drive a golf fan to distraction.
So I got just a little excited when I saw him “up there” in the lead
crowd and I was gracious enough to recall how great he was at Chambers Bay US
Open last year when he nearly won.
That’s when I remembered my late dad’s words “Nearly never did it” and I
was back in the bunker of lost hope.
St Jude isn’t to be found there either. Please give it your best putt this time round, DJ, and
here’s a positive thought to carry you through - St Jude’s attribute is a
club. I don’t know if that’s a
driver, iron or putter but I want you to play and pray “St Jude for the putt”.
Justin Rose: who could
forget that stunning little four-iron number on the difficult 18th
at Merion to set up a par four and his tear-filled eyes when he looked to the
skies to salute his late father, Ken, in the final round of the 2013 US Open
after tapping in his final putt?
While Rory has my heart, Justin has my head. Commonsense says this great player is deserving of the win
and he represents for me everything that symbolises my adopted home in this
England’s green and verdant land. Now,
Justin, get this: here’s a little song to carry in your heart. I’m sure you know the lyrics and the
tune.
“So let it out and let it
swing, hey Jude, begin
You’re waiting for
someone to perform with
And don’t you know that
it’s just you, hey Jude, you’ll do
The movement you need is
in your shoulders”
The avid Beatles’ fan
will have noticed my minor poetic licence adjustments to this song. Go Justin.
Enough of previews and
analysis for now. Everyone’s at it
and it’s largely smoke and mirrors, and if St Jude already knows what the
future few days hold in terms of a winner, he is keeping schtum on this. I just wouldn’t like to be in St Jude’s
sandals if all of the above-named decide to pray to him at once. That would put St Jude in hopeless-case
hell should he have to decide between them - and here’s the rub: would he pray
to himself?
As I watched Oakmont, I
was reminded of Ireland. Not that
the scenery is close on Ireland’s rock and emerald landscape but the weather
caught my attention. It was
raining in buckets, or stair rods or cats and dogs, and the whole shebang on
the first day of the US Open was not so much a tournament as a tournamental
washout. I was glad I wasn’t
there. My pride and joy of
straightened hair takes me hours to prepare and, one drop of rain later, it’s
way past knotted-frizz tumbleweed look.
Rory has my sympathy. Very
shortly, he will be right up to his neck in wrinkled curls no matter how short
his back and sides were when he first teed off.
The sun came out to play
on the second day and so did the players.
That’s when I really saw the course in the raw. The greens had dried to
rolling-on-glass consistency and those tight narrow fairways looked like they
positively flowed. Here at
Oakmont, the look is hostile.
Those bunkers and the neatly lined-up Church Pews look like they were designed
for trench warfare and that’s exactly what you’re engaged in should you happen
to waft your ball into these sand traps. Oakmont is surprisingly devoid of
water hazards, has no forced carries, is high on naturally sloping fairways
that end in devilish greens, and replete with bunkers. I love the rotund
potbellied ones; they look like giant pudding basins and they’re possessed of
the sort of roundness that makes you want to go “Boo!” as you pop your head out
on an unsuspecting passing golfer in the style of “Kilroy was here”. Don’t do it please. The Church Pews are something else – a
cantankerous cathedral of alternating sands and strips of rough. This was a fiefdom – a Fownes fiefdom
reflecting the steely mettle of its Pittsburgh-based founder.
The back end of day two
ran into the front end of day three because of the deluge on day one. It was an exciting day and DJ obviously
followed my advice, Justin and Rory didn’t, and one whom I had never heard of
before, young Andrew Landry, gave it his all. In three days which saw the 624th ranked player
come into his own, Landry birdied Oakmont’s short par-4 seventeenth on Sunday
morning – darkness having stopped Day 3’s continuing catch-up play - and then
made a sublimely long and curling putt for birdie on the eighteenth. With that final birdie, he knocked
Dustin out of the final pairing with Shane Lowry who had kept Ireland’s hope
alive when Rory failed to make the cut.
I am sure the big man from Offaly has a hold of the inside track to St
Jude should he need to dial it up: that –and a great short game – makes him an
inspirational player.
In the UK, we all got a
touch on “excited” when Westwood winged his way into contention but our hopes
waned with the dying of the light on Day 3 which saw his unrelenting hand back
of all his hard earned points. And
the slow bleed of those points reached haemorrhage proportions during Day
4. Westwood started the final
round five shots off the lead but dropped eight shots on his front nine and
crashed out of contention.
Goodbye, Lee. Time to join
Justin.
And so began the final
round with several golfing warriors in the mix for their first maiden
major. No wonder Jude and his club
were keeping a low profile. The
saint had a peep into the future and took a quick and quiet swing out of the
picture. The beginning was ruled
by a sustained Lowry lead and I was cheering my countryman on but, all the
while, Dustin Johnson was making a fighting return and was faring well until
the fifth. That’s when he took a
few practice putts close to the ball but had not officially addressed it. The ball moved, Dustin declared it, Lee
Westwood, as his paired partner for the round, verified that DJ had not touched
the ball, and the official checked and declared, “Play the ball as it
lies”. Dustin did but was informed
later, on the twelfth, that he might, or might not, be penalised a one
shot. All the while, play
continued and nobody knew what his lead was. This is top totty controversy and affected everyone’s play. Sorry, Shane, but at this point I
switched allegiance and rooted for The Dustinator as he swallowed his bitter medicine,
set his house in order, re-grouped and took the trophy home. Oh yes, the USGA penalised him a point
but Dustin delivered by a wide enough margin to take the cup anyway.
Right now, the USGA have
not given full disclosure on their ruling. Perhaps they are off in the Church Pews praying to St Jude
because, to amateur and pros alike, and to quote another Johnson – Boris to be
exact – their ruling seemed close to an attempt on their part to make cucumbers
out of moonbeams.
Next stop: The Open at
Troon.
