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PINEHURST, NORTH CAROLINA | Can you love boot camp?
Can you love shoveling coal into a furnace, running the extra mile or betting on yourself when the odds are approximately 10,000-1 against you?
The USGA believes you can and has launched an edgy, aggressive and strategic branding campaign designed to celebrate the U.S. Open in all its grimacing, grinding glory.
The tagline is simple: “From Many, One.”
That’s a general translation of E pluribus unum, the Latin motto of the United States, which means “Out of many, one,” and it is pointed not just at the 87 men who have won the U.S. Open but at the golfers and fans whose championship the USGA believes it to be.
The U.S. Open never has been easy to wrap arms around because, by design, it’s intimidating and unforgiving, a monolith of a championship. It can be like hugging a porcupine.
Yet, that is what separates the U.S. Open, what makes it different and makes its impact everlasting. It’s because it’s so demanding – while being open to anyone with a low single-digit handicap and a healthy cup of confidence – that the U.S. Open stands apart.
The beauty, beyond the bogeys, is in the people and the pursuit. The public-course player who makes it through two rounds of qualifying, the kid who just got his driver’s license suddenly playing in the national championship, or Tiger Woods.
In bringing the U.S. Open into sharper focus, USGA officials (with the help of two marketing groups) are setting the narrative rather than having it set for them, which has happened too often in recent years.
It’s a good idea and a crisp message, framed by the enduring images of Nicklaus, Watson, Trevino, Stewart, Woods and others doing the things that have separated them.
“For the last several years, even internally, we couldn’t figure out what we wanted to be known for,” Mike Davis, the USGA’s CEO, said last weekend at the organization’s annual meeting. “We let others dictate our brand.”
It’s a bold step for an organization long criticized for being too conservative, too slow to react, too content with itself. If this “From Many, One” campaign wasn’t absolutely necessary, it was nonetheless needed.
It works. It’s the USGA applying the wisdom of ages – be true to yourself – to its most important championship.
Mention the Masters to a golfer and, chances are, they share many common thoughts. The beauty of Augusta National. Amen Corner. Nicklaus winning in 1986. Tiger’s slow-motion chip-in in 2005. Tiger last year.
Mention the U.S. Open and it’s different. It’s the hard one, the major where double bogeys happen early and often. Johnny Miller shot 63 on Sunday all those years ago. Payne Stewart made the putt on 18 at Pinehurst to beat Phil Mickelson. The greens at Chambers Bay looked awful.
That’s the story, though. There’s a magnetism to the struggle, the thread of human spirit running through the U.S. Open. It’s not perfect but, as Dr. Bob Rotella famously said, golf is not a game of perfect.
When the USGA spent a year or more talking to players, officials, fans, volunteers and others about what the U.S. Open is, it was a bit like a focus group digging it out of the dirt.
The answer was important, not just to create a new slogan or develop fresh T-shirts. The USGA wants the U.S. Open to be about a shared vision, a championship that stretches across weeks, not just one week.
It’s about history and it’s about being the hardest test in major championship golf. It’s about embracing what you are and playing to your strengths.
It’s also about business. The U.S. Open accounts for approximately 75 percent of the USGA’s annual revenue, bringing in approximately $165 million. Consider it costs about $80 million annually to stage the U.S. Open (that doesn’t include the $15 million spent on players, including the $12.5 million purse), and the bigger the USGA can make the U.S. Open, the more lucrative it can be for the organization, which then can spend more money on other game-improvement projects.
This is a huge step for the USGA, which rightly has been criticized in recent years for issues with the championship it is celebrating.
Last year at Pebble Beach, the U.S. Open came off beautifully, and the USGA needs to build on that even as its predictably controversial distance report (released in conjunction with the R&A) continues to send ripples across the game.
The U.S. Open has four distinctive assets, according to what the USGA and its marketing groups determined:
Take those assets, blend in an abundance of red, white and blue, the idea of identifying the last man standing after nearly 10,000 started and give us Tiger winning on a bum leg, Nicklaus hitting the flagstick with a 1-iron and Mickelson finishing second six times and, well, that’s what the USGA is selling.
To borrow a line from actor Don Cheadle in one of the new U.S. Open commercials, “E pluribus unum, baby.”
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