By Tom Cunneff
A resident of White Plains, N.Y., David Barrett has written eight golf books, including his latest, The Greatest U.S. Opens. He began his career as a sportswriter at the Augusta Chronicle before becoming an editor for Golf Magazine for 18 years and then chief of research at Golf World magazine. His written two other books about the U.S. Open: Miracle at Merion, which won the USGA’s Herbert Warren Wind Award as the best golf book of 2010, and Golf Courses of the U.S. Open. He’s also written two books on Augusta: The Story of the Masters, a year-by-year history, and The Making of the Masters, about the founding and first couple of years of the tournament.
The first round in 1986 at Shinnecock Hills, with winds 30 miles per hour or more, temperature in the 40s, and intermittent rain. Nobody broke par. I walked the course to get a feel for what it was like out there and ended up among the gallery searching for Jack Nicklaus’s ball well to the right of the 10th fairway. “What kind of ball is it?” a spectator asked Nicklaus's caddie, his son Jackie. “A Nicklaus,” he answered. The ball wasn’t found, and Nicklaus had to return to the tee.
First, because it’s the national championship, which gives it importance in and of itself, and provides motivation for the players as a title they very much want to claim. Also, the way the USGA sets up the courses, with narrow fairways, heavy rough, and firm, fast greens, makes it the toughest test in golf and gives the event an identity.
The identity of the main protagonists makes a difference. When it’s the greatest players in the game who are battling, that makes it compelling. Then there’s the final-round action – typically with the uncertainty of who will emerge as the winner down the stretch, but sometimes a great performance like Tiger Woods in 2000 or Johnny Miller’s 63 in 1973, or a great shot like Tom Watson’s chip-in in 1982. Sometimes there's a back story, like Bobby Jones’s pursuit of the Grand Slam in 1930, and sometimes the venue itself is a co-star, like when the Open went to Pebble Beach for the first time in 1972.
I’m afraid I have to pick three. There was 1960 with Arnold Palmer’s charge at Cherry Hills to defeat a cast of characters that included 20-year-old amateur Jack Nicklaus and claim his only U.S. Open title. Then 1982 with Watson’s dramatic chip-in on the 71st hole to outduel Nicklaus in a battle of two titans. And there’s 2008, with the game’s alpha figure, Tiger Woods, overcoming a leg injury to take the title against everyman underdog Rocco Mediate in a playoff.
The ones that came the closest start with Bobby Jones in 1926 at Scioto where he birdied the last hole to win by one. In 1966 at Olympic, Billy Casper came from seven strokes behind with nine holes remaining to force a tie with Arnold Palmer and won the playoff. In 1989 at The Country Club, Curtis Strange beat Nick Faldo in a playoff matching the best players from the U.S. and England.
With a publication date in late 2024, we could have ripped things up and made a last-minute change if it was the best U.S. Open ever. It did turn out to be an exciting duel between Bryson DeChambeau and Rory McIlroy. The missed short putts down the stretch by both of them tarnished it a little bit, though DeChambeau’s great bunker shot on the 72nd hole elevated it back again. It would have been a tough call. I’m not quite sure which Open I would take off the list, and I’m good with 2021 representing recent U.S. Opens with Jon Rahm making birdies on the last two holes to win by one.
There were several layers of research materials. The first one was contemporary newspaper coverage, with online archives fortunately available for many of them. Golf and sports periodicals were the next layer, with their often lengthy and detailed reports. And several types of books were useful: general books about the U.S. Open, books about particular U.S. Opens, biographies and autobiographies that detail significant U.S. Opens of their subjects, and books about the tour or golf in general that touch on U.S. Opens. There are interview transcripts available from recent decades, and YouTube has the final-round broadcasts from the television era.
Sam Snead famously blew the 1939 U.S. Open with a triple bogey on the 18th hole of the final round. But I hadn’t been aware that Craig Wood blew a chance to win a playoff on the same hole the next day. Leading Byron Nelson by one, Wood went for the par 5 with his second shot but hit a pull-hook into the gallery that hit a spectator in the head, knocking him unconscious. After the man was taken away in a stretcher, Wood pitched to six feet from the hole. When Nelson made a 7-footer for a birdie, Wood was left with a birdie putt to win. He left it short, resulting in another 18-hole playoff the next day, which was won by Nelson. It happened that the spectator who was hit was the owner of a local driving range. Wood visited him in the hospital that evening, and the man said to him, “Craig, if you open the face of your club, you’ll cure that hook.”
The 1962 Open represented a changing of the crown, as 22-year-old Jack Nicklaus defeated the reigning king, Arnold Palmer in a playoff – and did it in Palmer’s western Pennsylvania backyard, no less. In 1973, Johnny Miller shot perhaps the greatest round in U.S. Open history with a 63, beating the average score of the field by nearly 11 strokes to come from six strokes behind and win the title.
Club founder Henry C. Fownes designed the course with the stated philosophy that “a shot poorly played is a shot irrevocably lost.” That fits very well with the USGA’s idea for the U.S. Open. And even for regular play the club keeps its challenging greens on the razor’s edge of playability, as the USGA likes to do. It has even been said that the club has to slow down its greens for a U.S. Open.
I have to go with Pebble Beach. First, there’s the magnificent setting next to the Pacific Ocean, which might give it an unfair advantage. But the course is great in and of itself for the way it utilizes that setting on the middle holes along the cliffs and for a finishing stretch that is ideal for drama. There’s great U.S. Open history there, with three of them making my book, won by Jack Nicklaus, Tom Watson, and Tiger Woods – all titans of the game.