Davis, who in 2006 assumed from Tom Meeks the responsibility for setting up Open golf courses, has made his own alterations to the championship, though the tournament remains a strategic exam on a stout layout.
"The U.S. Open is always like taking a quiz without reading the textbooks," Steve Flesch says.
If that's the case, then competing at Bethpage Black in '02 was like taking the bar exam after attending shop class. Not only was Bethpage a public course with which few were intimately familiar, but also it was a public course as juiced as Manny Ramirez. At 7,214 yards, the Black was the longest venue in Open history to date. Two par 4s, the 10th and 12th, were the longest ever at 492 and 499 yards, respectively. Stimpmeter readings on the subtly sloping greens approached a frightful 15. And heaven help those who strayed into the four-to-five-inch fescue rough. The penalty was often a full stroke and closer proximity to gallery denizens unrestrained by such considerations as decorum or decibel levels.
"Above all, Bethpage is a marvelous golf course," says Nick Faldo, who endeared himself to the locals by wearing an "I ❤ New York" hat and who thrust himself into contention with a tournament-low 66 in the third round that propelled him to T-5. "There was that beautiful bunkering and the movement with the holes going down then up to elevated greens. The old style of it was simply brilliant, but there could have been more imagination to the setup, not just straight lines of high rough. It was pretty static."
While the stringent setup flummoxed many, few were troubled by the gallery's New York state of malign.
"I never got heckled, but there were tons of comments. Tons. And, you know, they were creative," recalls Stewart Cink.
"I swear we played in winter," says Jim Furyk, who missed the cut the year before he claimed his own Open title in '03, of his first memories of Bethpage. "It was a great course, but a bad setup. It was long and hard, and it beat me up, and a few people let me know about it, telling me I sucked—and I did. I didn't particularly want to hear about it at the time, but they were on to me."
"I liked the course. I liked the test. I liked the noise," remembers Ireland's Padraig Harrington, the two-time reigning British Open champion, who tied for eighth and whose 68 was one of only four rounds under par on Black Friday, when chilling rains that seemed to have blown in from the British Isles sent scores and tempers soaring. "Everyone likes to play in a great atmosphere, and that was a great atmosphere. I loved that crowd. They were mostly Irish anyway."
Harrington notwithstanding, many of the 42,500 in attendance each day saved their sharpest barbs for Europeans. Two easy targets were Garcia and Colin Montgomerie. The latter had the good sense to miss his first Open cut in 10 years, but not without absorbing several scatological critiques about his anatomy. (To be fair, the object of Golf Digest's "Be Nice To Monty" campaign was, all in all, treated well by spectators that week.) The former had the temerity to not only contend for his first major title, but also to do so while fighting grip yips—incessantly "milking" the club before every shot—and lamenting perceived preferential treatment by the USGA for a certain player who happened to be the best in the world.
When fans weren't heckling him, they were counting the number of times he would grip and regrip … and regrip.
Ask Garcia about his memories of that week, and he'll gladly supply an opinion—the surprise being that it's fit for print. "It was a good week, and a hard week, and I had a chance to win," says Garcia, who finished fourth after closing with a 74. "As far as the rest of it, if that didn't make you tougher, then nothing would. It was a good experience. Not necessarily a fun thing, but, still, I learned a lot about myself."
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