Gritty test awaits the best at grinding US Open

Top golfers to initiate action at tricky course today.

PINEHURST: Punishing Pinehurst will challenge the world’s top golfers with lightning-fast greens, towering pines and formidable sand and brush run-off areas when the 114th US Open tees off Thursday.

Masters champion Bubba Watson, who won his second green jacket in three seasons just two months ago, plans to back off his long-driving ways for a better chance to hold Pinehurst’s wide but rock-hard fairways.

“The US Open brings out challenges that we’re not used to, challenges that we can only take once a year,” said Watson. “We would all find new jobs if we had to do it every week.”

Reigning British Open champion Phil Mickelson, a six-time US Open runner-up, is trying to complete a career grand slam ahead of his 44th birthday Monday.



“This is certainly as good a chance as I’ll have,” said Mickelson.

The formidable nature of the 7,565-yard layout is partly due to a 2011 renovation to return native brush and sand to the course.

Both Watson and Mickelson dubbed Pinehurst a fair test, Mickelson calling it “the best test I’ve seen to identify the best player.”

“This place is awesome,” said Mickelson. “It forces you to make decisions, to choose the right club off the tee, hit solid iron shots into the green and utilise your short game to save strokes.”

World number one Adam Scott is among the favourites, the 2013 Masters winner from Australia playing his first major event since dethroning still-injured Tiger Woods from the top spot.

Aussie Jason Day, the 2011 and 2013 US Open runner-up, stressed the mental test as well as the physical one.

“This is a true test of golf. It lets you to show what you’ve got,” said Day.

Defending champ Rose has secret weapons

Defending champion Justin Rose has not won since capturing last year’s US Open title, but the confident Englishman is getting sage advice this week from a couple of Pinehurst experts.

Rose played a practice round while joined by 81-year-old Willie McRae, the longest-serving caddie in Pinehurst history.

McRae caddied for such legends as Bobby Jones, Gene Sarazen and Walter Hagen as well as for four US Presidents and provided Rose a storyteller’s sense of the layout’s legacy.

“His ability to read long range shots and really know the rub of the green and the terrain was very useful,” said Rose.

And Rose’s putting coach, David Orr, lives just down the road from the course where the 114th US Open will begin Thursday.

“He definitely knows the golf course. He has been valuable from that perspective.”

Published in The Express Tribune, June 12^th, 2014.

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