Monday At The U.S. Open: (Some) Sun, Actual Practice And A Little 17 Preview
Day one of the 2023 U.S. Open at L.A. North firms up the course. But do we really need the team entourages? Plus, Tee Times, the short par 3 in play Tuesday, and a George Thomas film.
What more could you ask for?
Sun.
Groups of pro golfers grinding out the details on a course foreign to nearly all.
And more people inside the ropes than out.
Welcome to the Team era! With a side order of $125 tickets leading to a light spectator turnout. Thankfully, it’s only Monday and both grass and turnstile action have time to improve.
Still, it’s a curious trend at non-Masters majors involving practice rounds and inside the ropes access. It seems that the last rugged indvidualists of Earth who are also known to gripe about the slightest bump, bounce, and bite-sized bunker pebble, need a lot of help. So during practice rounds they hack away at the meticulously prepared turf and during the rounds even players whose relatives couldn’t spot them from a hundred yards away are trailed around the course by instructors, agents, caddies, physios, physios’ physios, launch monitor handlers, backup battery carriers, wives, girlfriends, step moms and second nieces they accidentally met on Tinder.
While I’m delighted that the few U.S. Open fans at Los Angeles Country Club on Monday got to see much more golf compared to recent majors, it would be even nicer to see a touch more respect for the course from the hoodie-wearers and their retinue.
Two random examples:
With that gripe behind us, it was an especially fine day to see the amazing property dotted with the flora and fauna of a major: USGA red-white-and-blue, players exuding a different edge with history on the line, and spectators eager to see what the place is all about.
The grand size and two-tier property of LACC won’t create the same looks that the much more intimate Merion produced. At that Philadelphia-area you’d look off to the distance and you’d swear it was a 1930 landscape painting. This place is just too big, too tightly restricted and too expensive to get crowds of a similar size, with the ridge bisected property also contributing to more pockets of holes. And that’s just fine since early reviews seem to be consistently highlight the singularity of this property, design and locale.
As for what I saw on the course, the greens look to be in a good place both in firmness and speed. Conditions are generally ramping up and the sun is still threatening to break through for more hours each day as round one arrives.
As for players, I noticed a little more intermingling of LIV players with non-defectors. The merger coalition new company NewCo equity investment whatever-it-is may be, could be thawing relations just in time for the Foreign Relations committee scrutiny! Or there were just so many players wanting to practice they had no alternative but to go out as foursomes.
Probably the strangest sight remains the amateurs who have NIL deals and are only decipherable from the pros by their bags.