PINEHURST, NORTH CAROLINA | The question, as it is with any U.S. Open golf championship, is whose turn is it this time?
It’s the answer – and all that follows it – that has been mystifying when it concerns the national championship and Pinehurst No. 2.
This will be the fifth U.S. Open played at No. 2 – the men played there in 1999, 2005 and 2014, and the women also played there in 2014 – and five more men’s and women’s Opens are booked for Pinehurst after this one.
Consider the four U.S. Open champions at Pinehurst No. 2:
Payne Stewart. Michael Campbell. Martin Kaymer. Michelle Wie (now Michelle Wie West).
It’s an eclectic group, to be sure.
Stewart had the best career, and Wie West was one of the most famous women’s golfers ever.
Here’s the tricky part:
After winning the U.S. Open at Pinehurst, those four players combined to win just two more tournaments in their careers.
Stewart, of course, died tragically in a plane accident just four months after his U.S. Open victory at Pinehurst, which culminated in one of the most captivating Sundays in the event’s 100-plus-year history.
Campbell won the HSBC World Match Play Championship three months later before his game faded.
Kaymer, a former world No. 1, has not won since his victory at No. 2 a decade ago.
It was four years before Wie West won again, and she has since retired from competitive golf.
Is it the golf course, with its turtleback greens and emphasis on recovery shots around the putting surfaces, that created the odd foursome?
Or is it just golf?
Phil Mickelson led Stewart by one stroke with three holes remaining in 1999, but the script flipped coming in.
Michael Campbell was ranked 80th in the world and beat Tiger Woods by two strokes in large part because Woods putted poorly, missing from 8 and 6 feet on the 16th and 17th holes, respectively, in the final round.
Kaymer was clearly the dominant player at Pinehurst a decade ago, relying on his putter from off the greens to win by eight shots. Wie West finally found the punctuation mark to her career despite a late double bogey that kept Stacy Lewis’ chances alive.
The first two U.S. Opens at Pinehurst were played on a version of No. 2 that no longer exists. The layout is the same, but acres of Bermudagrass rough that framed virtually every fairway is gone, replaced by scruffy, sandy natural areas dotted by native wiregrass and other vegetation.
It allowed the 2014 U.S. Opens to be played on a firm track which gradually turned brown in spots as a dry spell allowed the USGA to take the course setup to the edge it wanted.
Kaymer, who had won the 2010 PGA Championship and had an eight-week run as the No. 1 player in the world, had already won the 2014 Players Championship before coming to Pinehurst. He opened with rounds of 65-65 and bleached the drama out of the weekend.
“It was probably the best week of my career, I would say,” Kaymer said earlier this year at a LIV golf event in Miami.
Kaymer, now 39, played 28 major championships after his Pinehurst victory but had just one top-10 finish. He returns to Pinehurst this year encouraged after having battled physical issues in recent years. A native German, he since has moved to Europe with his family, and his return to No. 2 will feel different than his visit a decade ago.
“Back then, there were no scar tissues,” Kaymer said.
Campbell isn’t in the field at Pinehurst this year, but he has returned to competitive golf after retiring for a time. His game had already begun to dull when he injured a shoulder lifting luggage at the Hong Kong airport. He plays some senior events in Europe now, but what he did at the U.S. Open 19 years ago still glistens among his 12 professional victories.
As for Wie West, she returned to Pinehurst last year and walked around the closing holes at No. 2 where she won the biggest trophy in her career.
She was a dynamic and audacious star, teeing it up against men in PGA Tour events as a teenager and attempting to qualify for the men’s U.S. Open. Wie West had charisma and a game that seemed destined to put her among the game’s best ever, but she won only five times as a professional.
It was that week in Pinehurst, following immediately after Kaymer’s victory in the first back-to-back U.S. Opens played on the same site, that Wie West found her moment.
“The walk from my second shot to the green, I wish it could’ve lasted for hours, for days. It was the best walk I’ve ever had – well, outside of the walk to the altar and stuff like that … .”
Michelle WIE WEST
Leading by three with three holes to play, Wie West double-bogeyed the par-4 16th to see her lead drop to one. A birdie at the par-3 17th hole allowed her to make the walk she talked about last year.
“The walk from my second shot to the green, I wish it could’ve lasted for hours, for days. It was the best walk I’ve ever had – well, outside of the walk to the altar and stuff like that…,” she said.
Someone else has a chance to make that walk at this U.S. Open.
Where it goes from there is anyone’s guess.
E-MAIL RON
Top: Payne Stewart wins the 1999 U.S. Open at Pinehurst just four months before his death.
J. D. Cuban, Courtesy USGA Museum