U.S. Open the amazing train wreck

The U.S. Open is always a difficult tournament.  That is one of the things that makes it a great tournament to watch.   Is it be too difficult?   I guess it could be but we are talking about the best of the best in the Golf world playing this tournament.   There are four majors each year.  From my point of view they are majors for a reason.  If you are going to make them easier like the weekly tournaments then they really would not be special.

There was a lot of complaining about how difficult the U.S. Open was this year.  By fans and by players.  I did here some comments about how the difficulty of the course made it much more interesting. I agree with those that are saying that the difficulty made it much more interesting.

Some players were unable to handle the pressure and cracked.  One of those being Phil Mickelson    What he did on the 13th hole had a lot of people all up in arms.  I really don’t see the problem with what he did.  Hitting a ball that was still moving and getting a 2 stroke penalty.  The frustration was real.  I am a fan of Phil and I am really alright with what he did.  He was out of the tournament.  There was no shot for him to get a top 10 finish.   What he did had very little bearing on where he was going to finish.  What it showed is that no matter how good you are.  An event can be set up to challenge you.  I am fine with that.

While getting that frustrated he did not at any time say that the course was just too difficult.  There were other players that were saying it was a travesty.  It is insulting that the course would be set up like this.  Was it? Maybe I really just don’t care.  I wanted to see the struggle.    In a tournament like this there should only be one player that finishes under par or maybe even close to par.   That is the sign of a truly good golfer.

I would not want to see this every week.   Once a year maybe twice is great.  At some point players winning with a 20 under par score make it look like they are setting up the course just for low scores.  It gets kind of like Arena League Football where there is a touchdown on almost every possession and the score ends up being 88 – 84.   It is fun for a while but after some time it gets old.  There is only so much excitement that can come from high scoring games or super low scoring golf.

At some point you will just get bored with it.  At least I will and do.   That is what makes the U.S. Open such an exciting tournament to watch.   You know that the best are truly getting a challenge and that the winner is truly the golfer that had the best four days.   A little bit of luck can come into any tournament.  In this case the luck is pretty much eliminated and skill takes over.  Well maybe not but in general I think that will be true.

After I started this I got side tracked and we are through all the majors of the year already.  My parents always told me how fast time when when you got older and wow they were really right.

While all the 2018 Golf Majors were pretty interesting.  The only one that I mostly watched all the way through was the U.S. Open.   How ever I know that is not the norm.  The most watched Major Tournament this year was the PGA Championship.  Not because the golf was better but because Tiger was in contention.  That was pretty interesting and fun to watch.  The feel was different than the U.S. Open and in my opinion the U.S. Open was more fun.  We will talk more about Tiger in another post.

So what do you think?   Do you watch Golf and if so what do you like about it?  If you don’t watch golf why?