By Art Spander
For GlobalGolfPost.com
SAN FRANCISCO -- When you get tired walking around San Francisco, someone said, you can always lean against it. Ah yes, the city of hills, thrills and three-put greens.
Copyright 2012 Global Golf Post
By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner
The U.S. Open is a movable feast, shifting from the old golf world to the new and then back again. It is a carnival of emotion and tradition that is both a national championship and regional reflection.
The Super Bowl and World Series are big-city spectaculars. The Masters never wanders from the red-clay country of southeast Georgia. But the Open has been played in the middle of Ohio and along the Gulf Coast of Texas, on the eastern edge of Long Island and now once more on the headlands above the Pacific, in the golden city by the Golden Gate.
Copyright 2012 SF Newspaper Company
By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com
SAN FRANCISCO – We’ve been waiting for this, waiting for the matchup of Tiger, Phil and Bubba, waiting for golf’s great examination coming once more to America’s favorite city, waiting for birdies and bogeys by the Golden Gate.
The U.S. Open, a magical tournament, to be played starting Thursday at a course, fascinating, Olympic Club, where magic is always in the air, wafting like the afternoon breeze, engulfing like the fog off the Pacific.
© RealClearSports 2012
Olympic Club, Phil Mickelson, Tiger Woods, U.S. Open Email Article By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner
He was the kid from The City, 19 years old and confident in his golf. But when the 1966 U.S. Open was set for his home course, the Olympic Club, he was so pessimistic about his chances of qualifying he didn’t even sign up a caddy.
In the end, the only bag Johnny Miller carried was his own, from the car to the rack outside the pro shop. A BYU student at the time, Miller managed to grab the last qualifying spot for the Open during an event in Utah. The legend had started.
Copyright 2012 SF Newspaper Company
Johnny Miller, Olympic Club, U.S. Open Email Article By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner
There’s always someone emphasizing the negative, someone reluctant to acknowledge success, someone who looks at what Rory McIlroy did in last year’s U.S. Open, lapping the field as it were, and suggests the course wasn’t that difficult or the other golfers went about things improperly.
Who cares? Maybe Congressional Country Club outside Washington, D.C., was too wet and too wide to provide a perfect Open test. Maybe the rest of the pros ...
Copyright 2012 SF Newspaper Company