Municipal Bonds

Jack Nicklaus won the '72 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach, the first at a "public" site. Photo: GD Resource Center

Mike Hughes, CEO of the National Golf Course Owners Association, says selecting public courses for the U.S. Open reconciles the USGA with the marketplace. "The USGA is validating public golf. They're saying something. They're saying that they recognize that public golf is the predominant form of golf in the U.S."

For all its seeming club-centricity and WASPy pedigree, the USGA has long been public golf's best friend. In 1922, after a post-World War I surge in public course play, the USGA created the U.S. Amateur Public Links Championship, a national championship for public course players (ironically, the Publinx has come under criticism in recent years for attracting elite players whose ties to public golf are questionable). Today the USGA donates millions of dollars to facilities and programs that promote public-access golf. All of which raises the obvious question: Given the popularity of public-access golf and the USGA's longstanding recognition of public-course play, why did it take the better part of a century to bring the national championship to a public course?

"My guess," says Fay, the driving force behind the USGA's shift to truly public venues and the person most responsible for bringing the 2002 Open to Bethpage, "is that the private-club influence was so solidly ingrained within the USGA's DNA at that time that the idea of taking the Open to anything but a private club may never have been seriously considered."

Another factor that is no doubt influencing the USGA's awarding of its championships is private-club reflux. In recent years the USGA has experienced resistance from private clubs that had once proven eager to host the Open. In December 2007, only a year and a half after hosting the 2006 Open, Winged Foot famously walked away from a potential return date in 2015. A golfdigest.com article blamed the club's reluctance on "member fatigue."

The fact is an established iconic venue such as Winged Foot has little to gain from hosting an Open. Aside from a little ego massage, the only impact an Open can have on a prestigious club is a headache: Your course gets shut down, and if you're Winged Foot, your second course (the East) is closed for eight months because the Third Army is using it as a staging area.

Conversely the upside for public facilities is obvious: cachet and cash. "For any public golf course that is able to get the U.S. Open, it's sort of like being named the president of the United States: From that point on you will always be known and respected as the site of a U.S. Open," says Hughes. "That's a designation that's unique in the world of golf. There's nothing in our country that's a parallel mark of distinction."

Now comes the cash. Public courses' heavy usage and light municipal funding mean that they are far more likely to be interested in the U.S. Open windfall. In the mid-1990s Bethpage, which hadn't held a USGA championship since the 1936 Amateur Public Links, needed a lot of work and was therefore the beneficiary of lots of U.S. Open dollars. The facility got a $2.5 million course renovation, including a facelift from the "Open Doctor," Rees Jones, all paid for by the USGA.

Upon granting the 2008 Open to Torrey Pines, the USGA opened the spigot—sort of. Local donors already had paid for a multi-million dollar renovation by Jones. According to Mark Woodward, golf operations manager for the city of San Diego, the USGA covered projects such as leveling the landing area on the 18th hole, but not the new tee-to-green cart paths needed to enable effective movement of men and machines (such work was considered deferred maintenance and was therefore the responsibility of the city).

By and large, however, the benefits to a public course of hosting a U.S. Open are limitless. "It's incalculable as far as I can see," says David Catalano, director of Bethpage State Park. "For us to try to quantify the improvements that have occurred, it's not really measurable. The benefits to the public in terms of the conditioning and beauty of the golf course have been monstrous."

But as with increasingly weary private clubs, hosting an Open at a public course is not without its frustrations. In the run-up to this year's Open, Torrey Pines regulars have seen serious cutbacks in their access to the facility. Says a sympathetic Woodward, "The demand is high, but the supply is not what it needs to be."