PGATour.com: Fabled Olympic Club boasts mist, myths and memories

By Art Spander
Special to PGATour.com

It is a place of mist, myth and memories, some wonderful, some not. The Olympic Club was where Ben Hogan walked away in defeat, Ty Cobb stomped off in anger and numerous people less famous but no less fortunate spend hours stacking up dominoes, knocking in putts and tossing down drinks.

Olympic, where for a fifth time America’s golfing championship, the U.S. Open, will be played June 14-17, represents San Francisco in the extreme, with plenty of history and humor compressed into a magnificent Spanish-style clubhouse and onto two wonderful courses.

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©2003-2012 PGA/Turner Sports Interactive. All rights reserved.

SF Examiner: Truly open tournament gives everyone a shot

By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner

Fourteen years ago, Willie Brown, then the mayor, was saying, “The U.S. Open is wonderful. It’s a $150 million boon to San Francisco, and being the center of golf worldwide for a week — that can’t hurt.”

Fourteen years ago, Phil Mickelson was tying for 10th and Tiger Woods for 18th.

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Copyright 2012 SF Newspaper Company

RealClearSports: 2 Golfers Find Their Dreams

By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com

SAN FRANCISCO -- James Hahn was playing on adrenaline. Michael Allen was working on a 30-year-old dream. In that all-day ordeal called U.S. Open sectional qualifying, each found success and a place in America's golf championship.

A total of 130 players competed for seven places over 36 holes, 18 apiece at Lake Merced and Harding Park, both within view of Olympic Club, up a low hill, where the 112th Open will be held next week.

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© RealClearSports 2012

SF Examiner: Not everyone is built to win the U.S. Open

By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner

The U.S. Open places a premium on emotion and psychology. “A lot of players,” said four-time Open champion Jack Nicklaus, “are eliminated the moment the tournament starts.” Nicklaus, certainly, wasn’t in that category. Neither were Lee Janzen or the late Payne Stewart.

The Open comes to San Francisco’s Olympic Club next month for a fifth time, and for a while now, we’ve been told how in those other four the wrong man won and Olympic, out there across the Great Highway from the Pacific, is the graveyard of champions.

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Copyright 2012 SF Newspaper Company

SF Examiner: Expect the unexpected at Olympic come U.S. Open

By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner

Six weeks now. Six weeks until America’s golfing championship returns to that place known as the Graveyard of Legends, San Francisco’s Olympic Club, where the chill settles, the fog swirls and expectations end up buried like a ball in the thick rough.

Olympic, alongside the Great Highway, a couple hundred yards from the Pacific Ocean, where the first hole runs atop the San Andreas fault and the last hole has a green fronted by bunkers that look very much like the letters I-O-U.

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Copyright 2012 SF Newspaper Company