Don’t get stuck holding the bag at the U.S. Open
I was talking to a former PGA Tour caddie Thursday morning who said this year’s U.S. Open will be diabolical for those who carry bags of golf clubs. It has nothing to do with a Baby Ruth and the deep end of a swimming pool.
It mostly has to do with carrying 14 golf clubs in one of those giant Al Czervik-model bags over 7,585 yards of greenish-brown hills and dales and granite-like fairways that make it nearly impossible to track yardage.
If the wind comes up on Puget Sound, the players aren’t going to like this place called Chambers Bay, either. It was carved from a sand and gravel pit; most of the sand and gravel remains. It has been shaped into these long fairway bunkers (the one on 18 is 345 yards) and some that flank the browns — er, greens.
During the 1973 golf season, Jack Sheehan spent 13 weeks on the bag of a straight shooter named David Glenz, his former teammate at the University of Oregon. This was when golfers wore plaid slacks and some smoked cigars while they played, flicking ashes in the putting line.
The caddies mostly looked like Jeff Bridges in “The Big Lebowski.” Sheehan said they traveled together in VW buses and slept six to a room at Motel 6.
Sheehan eventually would leave Glenz holding the bag. He said he only caddied for his pal because he couldn’t find a real job, and he was thinking about becoming a pro golfer himself. He said that idea lasted about two weeks out on tour.
But he met a guy from Golf World magazine at a satellite tournament in Mexico, and the guy paid him $75 for 3,000 words about what it’s like to be a caddie on tour — and now Sheehan has written 12 books and screenplays and hundreds of articles for airline magazines.
If you’ve ever considered buying a glow-in-the-dark toilet seat in the SkyMall on the way to Cleveland, you probably have read something Jack Sheehan wrote in the preceding pages.
Sheehan grew up in Spokane, Wash., so he knows his way around golf courses in the Pacific Northwest. He says Chambers Bay is not a typical Pacific Northwest track, because golf courses in the Pacific Northwest have trees, plural, and Chambers Bay has only one: a 75-foot Douglas Fir on the edge of the back nine near the railroad tracks.
You can buy a golf shirt in the gift shop with a picture of the Lone Fir on front for $86.
A few years ago somebody rode a Jet Ski across Puget Sound, climbed the tree, drank a few beers and tried to hack it down.
Sheehan said if the wind comes up this weekend, the best golfers in the world may return Monday and start hacking away at the rest of it. Not with 7-irons and pitching wedges. With chainsaws.
When the feed was punched up on Thursday, I thought it was the British Open. It looked just like the Open on the other side of the pond, with links instead of holes, except the caddies were wearing shorts.
When they broke for a commercial, golf balls were shown rolling around and about the greens in speeding arcs. If you can stop a marble on an ironing board, you should have no trouble shooting 3-under at Chambers Bay.
When they came back from the commercial, Las Vegas golfing resident Natalie Gulbis, who apparently has a new gig as an on-course reporter, said the balls of Phil Mickelson, Bubba Watson and Angel Cabrera — the featured group on the Internet feed — all were in the bunker. That made Gulbis’ job easier, at least on that hole.
“I have a feeling that by the end of the week, this will be one of the least popular courses the U.S. Open has ever been played on,” Jack Sheehan said. “It’s so different than anything they’ve ever played before. Chambers Bay is a different animal.”
If the wind kicks up, it could turn into one of those Bigfoots people sometimes think they see up that way. Sheehan saw a video where Watson aimed a long putt toward Portland, and it curved in a crazy, speeding arc and somehow found the hole.
Chambers Bay is a hike and it’s a weird hike — so weird that two of the holes, Nos. 1 and 18, will be par 4s one day and par 5s the next. How do you prepare for that if you are a caddie, or the guy who tips them a little something for the effort? One of those GPS rangefinders will get you only so far on a course like this.
There are more slopes at Chambers Bay than on the downhill skiing course at Kitzbuhel. Even the tee boxes at Chambers Bay have a slope to them.
“It leaves too much in the hands of fate or luck,” Sheehan said.
The casual golf fan, the one who tunes only into the four majors and maybe the The Players Championship with the island green, probably will like it, though. The casual fan likes to see the pros hit the ball in crazy arcs with no idea of where it’s going, because that’s how the casual fan hits it at the local muni course.
But at the time of this writing, the wind is hardly blowing on Puget Sound. Some guys are even making birdies.
There’s a Union Pacific freight train rumbling through the back of the course, and a guy named Cody Gribble is hanging in there, and Phil is putting well.
Uh-oh. Now he’s frowning and stomping about like one of those Bigfoots. Mickelson just hit one in the gravel, next to this real tall grass.
Here’s his next shot.
Whoops!
His next shot wound up in another bunker.
Now his ball sort of looks like a Baby Ruth in the deep end of the swimming pool.
Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski.
