Thursday, June 15, 2000
Pebble Beach: A beauty and a beast
Players aim for par amid the wind and surf
PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. — Some events you have to cover, some you want to cover and some you kiss the sacred ground when you get there. Covering the U.S. Open at the Pebble Beach Golf Links is one of the latter. To golf geeks, “I'm going to the Open at Pebble” carries the same cachet as “I'm having dinner with Anna Kournikova.”
And so we are here, standing bestride the 7th tee on a blue-perfect Wednesday morning, high on a hill above the Pacific Ocean, loving life. The 7th at Pebble is a 106-yard par-3, no bigger than a wish. From the tee,
the green looks close enough to touch. You're way up here. It's right down there. You could throw a Titleist to within 10 feet of the cup.
It's the shortest hole in major championship golf. Also, the most photographed. At the 7th, you don't know whether to hit a pitching wedge or take a Polaroid. On Wednesday, perfectly dry, sunny and windless, the best players in the world hit wedges into the center of the little green. They made it look easy.
But just wait. One of the next four days, the wind will blow 40 miles an hour. Maybe it will rain, a fine mist. The players who hit wedges Wednesday will grope for 7-irons or worse. The day Tom Kite won the last Open played here, in 1992, he missed the green at No.7 with a 6-iron.
That's Pebble Beach. Beauty and the beast. So is the 484-yard, par-4 2nd. If you can keep your 330-yard tee shot in a fairway that's barely 30 yards across, you have a chance of hitting a long iron into a green no wider than a banquet table.
And we're not even talking about Pebble's signature holes, 8, 9 and 10, all played bestride the crashing surf.
“Before, we felt we had to play the first seven (holes) in under par or we'd be in serious trouble. Now, we'll settle for par,” Colin Montgomerie said.
Monty figures even-par 284 will win here. That would suit the United States Golf Association, whose stated interest at this event every year is to preserve the sanctity of par. What the USGA really does is identify the world's best players and systematically torture them. Which is fine.
Pebble Beach is the best place for the Open, if only for the irony: World's sexiest golf course abuses world's best players.
U.S Open favorites are God-fearing, church-going, non-smoking Republicans who invest in savings bonds, wear their seat belts and always look both ways before crossing the street. If John Daly ever won the Open, they'd have to rethink the whole thing.
As kids, Open favorites never played with matches. As adults, they never go to Vegas.
They sound like Phil Mickelson, who allowed Tuesday that he might lay up on selected par-4s. Mickelson so fears the rough and the (usually) persistent winds here, he figures it's easier to hit a wedge into a green and attempt a one-putt par than tempt the fates with a long-iron approach.
That's like swimming the English Channel wearing a life preserver. That's the Open. “I've never had much problem taking aim with a golf club and hitting it where I want,” Montgomerie decided Wednesday. Monty nearly won here eight years ago, until Kite passed him in a Sunday afternoon gale.
Pebble Beach is beautiful. And it'll kill you if you're not careful.
U.S. Open coverage from Associated Press
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