US Open 2016

Hiding away amongst a sea of Euro Championship football is this year’s second major the US Open. All of golf’s top players will be in Pennsylvania this weekend hoping to tame the brute that is Oakmont.

The USGA set the US Open courses to be difficult and don’t like winning scores to be too far under par or too many players to score below it. Despite the hype of Chambers Bay last year and predictions of carnage eight players still managed to finish under par for the tournament with Jordan Spieth’s winning score being 275 (-5). The USGA will not have liked that.

So this year we are off to Oakmont, a course which regularly features in Golf Digest’s top five hardest golf courses and the USGA have not held back on their difficult set up. The last time the US Open was played here in 2007 Angel Cabrera won with a winning score of 285 (+5) and some are predicting that this year it could even be higher. This week Phil Mickelson called it the hardest golf course he has ever played.

The course offers no let up, the fairways are narrow and hard, the rough thick and long. The bunkers are deep and very penal and the greens are hard, fast and full of undulations. Pars will be good scores on pretty much every hole; birdies will be rare, sub par rounds almost non-existent.

With the course offering no respite picking a winner will be difficult. If Jason can straighten up his driving he will have a chance. If Jordan can improve his ball striking he will have chance. If Rory can get his putter hot, he will have a chance. Of golf’s big three Jason Day is rightly the favourite. His driving weakness is not as noticeable as Jordan’s poor ball striking or Rory’s woeful putting.

However I think the winner is more likely to come from lower down the rankings. The US Open has a habit of throwing up winners from slightly outside of the golfing elite. Since the turn of the century only Tiger, Retief Goosen and Jordan last year have won the tournament when starting inside the world’s Top 5.

My picks for this week are Charl Schwatzel, Patrick Reed, and as a rank outsider daft bet, Gregory Bourdy. He is very long odds but you never know, he may sneak a place. Justin Rose, Henrik Stenson, and Dustin Johnson are other names I considered but for varying reasons think they will fall short.

I like to see golfers have to dig extremely deep to win tournaments, especially majors and I also like close finishes (something the US Open often serves up). However I also like to see birdies win tournaments and constantly scraping for par can become a bit boring.

I’ll still be watching though (in between certain football matches) cheering on Rory, Sergio, and Lee (more in hope for at least a couple of them ). I’ll definitely be watching uninterrupted on Sunday evening, despite the lack of birdies.

The full tournament is live on Skysports only which also means less interest although by next year almost all golf on TV will be Skysports only although I have Skysports I don’t like this.

So if there is any golf fans out there let me know your thoughts and tips for the tournament and we’ll see if we can break 20 comments over the entire weekend