It is staged by the United States Golf Association (USGA) in mid-June, scheduled so that, if there are no weather delays, the final round is played on the third Sunday. The U.S. Open is staged at a variety of courses, set up in such a way that scoring is very difficult, with a premium placed on accurate driving.
“It's very difficult. Par is great score on a lot of holes. Bogeys aren't going to kill you. We don't do this very often, and I think it's very, very fitting and totally acceptable to have this kind of test and this difficult setup for a U.S. Open, and it's strictly because of conditions.”
This U.S. Open will be played on the lengthy Country Club in Brookline. It is a par-70 course with a total distance of 7,204 yards.
It has hosted the U.S. Open in 1913, 1963, and 1988, along with five U.S. Amateur championships and three U.S. Women's Amateur championships.
The only expense he must pay to play in a tournament is a mandatory $50 locker room fee. Most professionals competing in a pre-tournament qualifying event pay entry fees of $400 apiece, except for Champions and Nationwide Tour players ($100 each) and non-exempt PGA Tour members (no entry fee).
After a fresh influx of $5 million, the U.S. Open purse is now the richest in the championship's history, with $17.5 million up for grabs.
The first golf course in the United States was Oakhurst Links, built in 1884 in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. It was originally a six hole track which was later expanded to nine holes. Oakhurst was the first course and golf club in the United States.
Clubs of similar exclusivity charge initiation fees of nearly half a million dollars, and some estimates put Country Club monthly dues around $1,500.
TCC owns 27 holes worth of property here at Brookline, which means it has the luxury of picking only the best 18 holes for its championship routing. For years, No. 11 didn't make the cut. The hole was short — too short, some said — but more problematically, it was bland. Decades of play had worn down its teeth.
"With it being a major, it's quite different than a regular PGA Tour event," Fitzpatrick said. "At the end of the day, they're just really hard to win. I think up until Southern Hills, really, I didn't really appreciate how hard it is actually to win a major. Yeah, I've not challenged, really, up until then.
Matt Fitzpatrick wins the U.S. Open for first PGA Tour victory. Matt Fitzpatrick hoists the trophy after winning the U.S. Open golf tournament at The Country Club in in Brookline, Mass., on Sunday.
British Boys champion in 2012, he picked up the silver medal as low amateur at the 2013 Open Championship before moving smoothly on to that Country Club win that saw him ranked the world's No. 1 amateur.
"Unlike any links golf we play, we don't have elevation changes like this," said Woods. "You are going to get some funky bounces out there. Balls are going to roll and catch slopes."
Woods said it will be interesting to see how the sprinklers will impact the tournament noting that they are so close to the greens players could land on them and be forced to take a drop.
Ryan Moore said that USGA setups made him "hate golf for about two months.". About the the 14th and 17th holes specifically, Moore said of the USGA: "I feel like instead of difficulty, they just go for trickiness. ...
But it was irascible Dave Hill who took the biggest shots. Hill said that course designer Robert Trent Jones Sr. must have had the blueprints upside down when he built it. Asked what he thought the golf course needed, Hill replied, "80 acres of corn and a few cows to be a good farm.
Hazeltine National Golf Club was only eight years old at the 1970 U.S. Open, a baby of a golf course built on farmland and sitting (at that time) pretty much alone about 30 miles outside of Minneapolis, Minn.
The complaints about Pebble Beach Golf Links during the 2010 U.S. Open began with Tiger Woods moaning about the "just awful" greens. Pebble Beach has poa annua greens, which look splotchy, and which get bumpier throughout the day. But the real bashing was reserved for the 14th and 17th greens.
The 17th was a long par-3 whose very small area for hole locations led to what some considered an unfair location on the back portion of the bowl-shaped green.
Golfers knew they were in trouble at the 1974 U.S. Open when they heard that Jack Nicklaus putted a ball from the back half of the green right off the front of the No. 1 green.
The USGA's Sandy Tatum, responsible for the setup, told Golf Digest, "Players were taking members of the media out onto the golf course and dropping balls into the rough and saying, ‘try hitting that.'. ".
The Olympic Club is "so difficult" because of the standards in which the USGA sets up US Open golf courses.
What makes US Open golf courses difficult? The scores at the 2012 US Open seem pretty bad, after the first round only five players were under par. Looking at the previous major tournament, The Masters in April, there were 28 players under par after the first round.
Hole 5 is almost the mirror image of #4; dolgeg right with fairway sloped to the left. This one plays downhill and so is longer, and the fairway is even narrower. Hit the tee shot long and this hole will punish you by forcing you to hit a 200-yard long iron or lofted wood shot over trees close in to the fairway.
The USGA, the organization that stages the US Open, sets up its golf courses as a rigorous test to challenge a golfer's shot-making ability, course management, and composure under pressure. The USGA considers the following factors in setting up US Open golf courses:
The Masters is always played at Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia. It is a par-72 course, with an unofficial Course Rating of 76.2 (so a scratch golfer would expect to play 4 over par).
Hole 2 is straight and shorter, but the approach is uphill, the green is small and depending on where the hole was cut you can't see the pin from the best approach to it (for the final round, it was cut in just such a location, on the other side of a steep bunker from the best approach).
In 2011, Rory McIlroy broke Woods's record score in relation to par and aggregate by winning at -16, 268. Jason Day finished second at -8, 8 shots behind McIlroy. However, 20 golfers finished under par that week, and 38 golfers finished at +3 or better.
"Unlike any links golf we play, we don't have elevation changes like this," said Woods. "You are going to get some funky bounces out there. Balls are going to roll and catch slopes."
Woods said it will be interesting to see how the sprinklers will impact the tournament noting that they are so close to the greens players could land on them and be forced to take a drop.