By Art Spander
ERIN, Wis. — This 2017 U.S. Open at Erin Hills, smack in the middle of somewhere southwest of Milwaukee, has the strong scent of another on a course scraped out of America’s heartland, that one in 1970 at Hazeltine, near Minneapolis.
The responses that year varied from dislike to pure hatred, the latter expressed by the late Dave Hill, a testy pro who would just as soon drop a critic with punch as drop a 40-foot putt. “All it lacks,” he said of Hazeltine, “is 80 acres of corn and a few cows to be a good farm.” And he finished second.
Jack Nicklaus, more diplomatic than Hill, said what bothered him about Hazeltine is Ben Hogan never played there, meaning if the USGA, which runs the Open, is so obsessed with tradition, why are they bringing it to a site with no link to Hogan, Sam Snead or other former greats?
Now, after a remodeling, two U.S. Opens, a PGA Championship and the 2016 Ryder Cup, Hazeltine has some history and a presence. Mark Twain said that politicians, old buildings and prostitutes become respectable with age. To that list, add golf courses.
So maybe there is hope for Erin Hills. Or maybe not. The USGA deserves a small cheer, at least, for expanding the Open, once limited to very old line, private, restricted — and admittedly great — courses such as Merion, The Country Club and Winged Foot.
But bringing in venues such as Pebble Beach, Pinehurst and Bethpage Black, all expensive but available to the public, is different than showing up at a little-known site among barns and silos in America's Dairyland.
To a golfer, names like Pebble, Oakmont, Medinah and Shinnecock Hills, at the end of Long Island, have a certain resonance. As throughout sports do names such as Churchill Downs, the Rose Bowl and Yankee Stadium. Staging the U.S. Open at Erin Hills is akin to holding Wimbledon on a battered tennis court in northeast England, even if the opponents are Federer and Nadal.
This is the second installment of the USGA’s “Guess what we’ve got cooking?” idea. Two years ago, the Open was played at Chambers Bay, another unproven course on Puget Sound near Tacoma. It fell victim to the weather, a lack of rain in frequently rainy Washington State.
Gary Player, who has his own agenda — he designs courses — said Chambers Bay was awful. At least there were some beautiful views, unlike Erin Hills. And at the end, after the grumbling, the one-two finishers were, in order, Jordan Spieth and Dustin Johnson, two of the best.
That always has been one way to judge the quality of any course, and whether it should be used either for the U.S. Open or the PGA Championship: the leaderboard. The other two majors, the Masters, always at Augusta National, and the British Open, are outside this category.
If you get Spieth, who won two majors in ’15, and Johnson, who took last year’s U.S. Open at venerable Oakmont, then maybe the course will gain acceptance over the years. If not, at least it may have produced one magnificent tournament.
This week at Erin Hills, the leaderboard through two rounds was decent, especially with no Tiger Woods — who may be out forever — or Phil Mickelson in the field.
Rickie Fowler, who has the commercials, might at last get the major. Players such as Brooks Koepka and Paul Casey are winners lingering just outside the big names. They wouldn’t be a surprise with a victory.
What Erin Hills could have used to escape anonymity was a win by Rory McIlroy, Jason Day or Dustin Johnson, each of whom has at one time of late — Johnson at the moment — been No. 1 in the world rankings. “Never heard of the place, but Rory won there” sort of attention.
But Rory and Day missed the cut, and Dustin was right on the line.
Maybe Erin Hills' reputation will be that of the course where Day made two triple bogies on the front nine in the first round and a 23-year-old Open rookie from San Diego, Xander Schauffele, didn’t make a bogey until the second round.
Whatever, it’s still smack in the middle of nowhere, a course as hard to find as it is to play.
