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The greatest moments in golf history often share the beauty of golden-hour light, and there has to be a reason for that beyond the obvious explanation that events tend to be all-day affairs that end in the evening.
It’s something within the soul of the game. For a sport that takes a certain level of sadistic pride in how maddening the pursuit of improvement can be, there comes a serenity when the wind dies down, the sun races to the horizon and one triumphant player claims the title of lone survivor.
It’s my favorite part of covering a tournament in person. When the trophy presentation is over and the fans have gone home, the course that had just inflicted pain looks so peaceful, so simple and so hopeful.
Every imperfection in the worn-out greens is exposed, every slight sound is amplified. As the singer John Denver may have said, late-day golf “fills up my senses.”
No other time of day has quite the same effect in making you want to have a club in your hand. That last hole in the silence, before it’s too dark to proceed, could be the one where your swing feels just right. What golfer hasn’t said out loud, “I think there is just enough time for one more?”
It stands to reason that if playing golf in the evening produces that feeling, watching golf in the evening has something special in it, too. For those of us on the United States’ East Coast, a major championship being played on the West Coast – as was the case last week with the U.S. Open at Torrey Pines and will be the case again in 2023 when the national championship heads to Los Angeles Country Club – is the pinnacle of watching golf on TV.
There’s time to sleep in, play 18 in the morning and then fire up the grill after your round. In the case of the U.S. Open, there are afternoon appetizers like the College World Series on the sports menu. With the leaders not teeing off until well past lunchtime and the meat of the back nine not coming until prime-time hours, the bulk of the day is open.
No matter what you do, the building anticipation of watching the best in the world, while nursing your drink of choice, is a joy I’ll never take for granted.
Maybe it’s just coincidence, but don’t West Coast majors seem to deliver on drama more often than not? Tiger at Torrey in 2008. Spieth at Chambers Bay in 2015. Morikawa at Harding Park last November. Virtually any time Olympic Club gets the call, something strange is bound to happen.
On Sunday, the longest day of 2021, a golfer could be expected to stay out as late as he or she can for every last hole, every last shot. But on the rare occasion when a major championship is being played out in prime time, you can bet most of us are inside, waiting to see a piece of golf history.
Sean Fairholm
E-MAIL SEAN