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You can't fake your way around a U.S. Open course. Sure, you can fake it for 17 holes as Phil Mickelson did at Winged Foot last summer, but eventually your A-minus game will be exposed for what it is: Not good enough here, buddy.
There's a reason why wild-driving Seve Ballesteros won the Masters and the British but left the U.S. Open to those who could color inside the lines.
"The U.S. Open asks you the same question over and over," says Padraig Harrington, 5th at Winged Foot. "Can you hit the fairway? Can you hit the green?"
Here with a roundtable of players, major champions to journeymen, discuss what differentiates our national championship from the other three majors, how it feels unique when you're right in the middle of it, and the impact all of those insanely hard courses have on the players.
Open indoctrination: Get ready to be embarrassed.
Bart Bryant: Last time they had the U.S. Open at Oakmont [in 1994] I played in it, two rounds. I hit it short of No. 2 on the second day, in the long rough, and the pin was back-right, and the rough was so long in there I was just afraid I couldn't get it out. So I took a full swing from about five feet off the green and I flew it over the green out of bounds. [Laughs.] So that was good.
Lee Janzen: I played in my first U.S. Open in 1985 [at Oakland Hills], as an amateur. I'd just finished my junior year in college. I was 20. I hit the ball pretty good, but I hadn't been on banked greens very many times, so, it showed. I went from a Florida boy on Bermuda greens to the most undulating bent [grass] greens in the U.S. Open, other than Oakmont.
Brett Quigley: Last year, first round at Winged Foot, I started having to hit sand wedge out of the rough. I couldn't advance it a couple of times. On one hole I couldn't even get it back to the fairway. I think I shot 80. If you get it going the wrong way at the Open, there's no relief. There's no hole where you can attack and start to get it back. It's all defense.
Al Geiberger: I remember one at Hazeltine [in '70], the first year we played, I wasn't ready. It was the year Dave Hill said they ruined a perfectly good pasture. I shot 75 in the first round and didn't play well at all in the second. [Geiberger shot 81.] I remember that as a wound.
Tom Lehman: My first one was '86, the year Ray Floyd won at Shinnecock. I loved it. The first day was a horrendously bad day and I actually shot a decent score, a 76 when the average was like 79. It was blowing and raining. I believe I shot 78 the second day and missed the cut. I was on the mini-tours so I played with Fred Wadsworth and possibly Darrell Kestner. We were all struggling pros trying to make it.
And if you get it going, enjoy it while it lasts.
Padraig Harrington: Three pars to win the Open. It sounds very easy, doesn't it? I was leading [last year] with three holes to go. It doesn't really matter what happened on Saturday. [Editor's note: Harrington triple-bogeyed Winged Foot's infamous 18th hole.] It was the last three holes. I bogeyed 16, pushed too hard on 17 and pushed too hard on 18 trying to make up for it, simple as that.
Bryant: I remember I was playing decent last year at Winged Foot and just didn't quite get it home. I think I finished 20-something [Bryant shot 77 on Sunday and tied for 32nd place], but I really could have got into the top five, but I just could not get it to the clubhouse. There was a lot of that going on that week.
