PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. -- If slow play on tour was the talking point in last week's players meeting in Charlotte, then ADD sufferers will have a hard time watching the U.S. Open at Torrey Pines. Phil Mickelson recently played a practice round there, and made it sound like six-hour rounds will be the norm.

"It was funny watching some of the amateurs play," Mickelson said at his Players Championship news conference Tuesday. "I was getting ready to tee off, and this group in front of us, probably an 8-handicap player, hit a nice drive out there, 230, he hits it in the first cut of rough, not even the thick stuff but the first cut. They could not find it and he takes a hack at it with an iron, and it dribbles a foot. He hacks again and it dribbles a foot, until he finally picks up and puts it in the fairway."

Asked how long it took to play behind that group, Mickelson never gave a definitive answer. "Fortunately he kept dropping it in the fairway," Mickelson said. "He looked like Hogan hitting it from the middle of the fairway. We kept stepping on balls in the rough, and it wasn't anything nearly like what it will be. It wasn't overgrown like last year where they overgrew it and then cut it back. But that kikuya grabs the club so much that it's going to be an interesting test."

In those conditions, how does Phil Mickelson think Matt Lauer, Justin Timberlake, Tony Romo and contest winner John Atkinson, an 8-handicapper, will do in the Golf Digest U.S. Open Challenge that will be played on the Friday before U.S. Open week begins? Armed with information from short-game coach Dave Pelz, Mickelson had devised an answer:

"The biggest area of difference is off the fairway," Mickelson said. "But it will be very interesting and comical to watch that challenge of trying to break 100. There's just no way that statistically (it will happen). You know, Pelz brought the ShotLink out to the World Amateur and had thousands of players and did all the statistical analysis on it. And a 10-handicap when they get moved back to tour-caliber-distance golf courses, just yardage alone, not counting greens or the rough, shoots 92, on average. It is what it is; that's the numbers.

"When you throw them on a 7,600-yard golf course, you don't even need rough; it's going to be in the 90s. You throw rough in there, you don't have the pin placements and the greens, it'll be 90 or 100. And when you throw in the pin placements and the greens, it's not even a fair challenge."

—-Tim Rosaforte

The USGA received 8,390 entries for the 2008 U.S. Open at Torrey Pines in La Jolla, Calif., with the applicants ranging in age from 12 (Rico Hoey, Rancho Cucamonga, Calif.) to 79 (Harris Moore Jr., Los Angeles).

Tiger Woods is among eight past champions fully exempt for the championship June 12-15. Woods, the 2000 and 2002 winner, is exempt in eight different categories, the most of any of the 58 golfers currently exempt.

Entries were received from golfers in all 50 states and 68 foreign countries, including professionals from Ghana, Nigeria and Guatemala.

Local qualifying begins May 5 at 111 sites.

--Bill Fields

Everyone would likely agree that it is altogether a good thing that the United States Golf Association has added municipal courses to the U.S. Open mix. That said, Torrey Pines Golf Course near San Diego won't remotely resemble a municipal course when the Open is played there in June.

"I've been playing there since 1981," former Torrey Pines men's club president Art Stromberg said, "and I've never seen the condition that good. The fairways are beautiful. They're all kikuyu now. The ball sits up like it's on a tee. They even have sand in the traps."

They even have sand in the traps. That says it all, of course. Its condition is pristine, which is not how the public usually finds it.

The way they're finding it these days is long and hard. Joe DeBock, the head professional, said that rounds are taking upwards of six hours now, mostly the result of players searching for lost balls in the rough.

The Torrey Pines Municipal Golf Club, in fact, has enacted, temporarily, a local rule in the interest of speeding play in its tournaments: After a five-minute search for a lost ball, the player can drop another and take a one-stroke penalty, rather than stroke and distance.

--John Strege

HOUSTON--In an extension of what anyone who wants to see golf grow has to view as an extremely positive trend, the United States Golf Association on Friday said it awarded the 2015 U.S. Open to yet another public course--Chambers Bay, a municipal links on lower Puget Sound in Washington state.

As a prep for the big show, Chambers Bay, which is the work of Robert Trent Jones Jr. and Bruce Charleton, will also get the 2010 U.S. Amateur Championship. It will be the third municipal course to play host to the U.S. Open, following Bethpage Black in 2002 and Torrey Pines later this year. Bethpage also has the 2009 U.S. Open. The USGA also announced Friday that Erin Hills Golf Course in Wisconsin, which has this year's U.S. Women's Amateur Public Links Championship, will play host to the 2011 U.S. Amateur.

"We are excited to take the U.S. Open Championship and the U.S. Amateur to such an awesome site," says Jim Hyler, chairman of the USGA Championship Committee. "This is the first time the U.S. Open has been to Washington and we are confident that the golf course will provide a challenging test for the best players in the world, as well as a great spectator experience for those who attend the event and watch it online and on television."

Chambers Bay, opened in June 2007, is the centerpiece of a 930-acre park purchased by Pierce County, Wash., in 1992 that today features scenic trails and coastline vistas where a sand and gravel quarry once stood. Erin Hills is a links-style championship course designed by Mike Hurdzan and Dana Fry of Hurdzan-Fry Architects, and Ron Whitten, Architecture Editor for Golf Digest.

While U.S. Opens have been played at high-end resort courses such as Pebble Beach and Pinehurst No. 2, the move in 2002 to Bethpage, which is a New York state park, was the first time the national championship was taken to a truly public course. That Open was a success by every measuring stick--attendance, enthusiasm of the galleries, corporate hospitality sales, the quality of the venue and the winner, Tiger Woods.

This year the bring-golf-to-the-people trend continues at Torrey Pines, located in a public park north of San Diego. The course the players experience and the fans see at the U.S. Open will be very different than the one Woods romped across in winning the Buick Invitational by eight strokes two weeks ago.

"We are going to have a lot of fun there," says Mike Davis, the guy who sets up the courses for the USGA.  "We'll sneak tees up, move them around, make holes play differently day to day so the players have a variety of challenges. Like Pebble Beach in 2000, Torrey is a different course in June than it is in February. We will have no problem getting it firm."

Davis says the par-5 13th hole, for example, will play from three different tees and, with the prevailing wind at the back that time of the year, will still pose a risk/reward decision about going for the green in two even at 617 yards.

--Ron Sirak

This story appears in the January 11 issue of Golf World.

WHEN the San Diego Union-Tribune reported last week that mice testing positive for hantavirus had been found in the Torrey Pines State Reserve, there was some concern about the nearby Torrey Pines golf courses, home of this month's Buick Invitational and, later in the year, the U.S. Open. Would caddies be required to carry snap-traps? Would players have to wear surgical masks? Would Johnny Miller run out of rodent jokes?

The concern was real because hantavirus can be a serious illness. While it usually results in symptoms similar to the common flu, the illness can progress and in a small number of cases even result in death. According to the paper, more than 375 people have died from hantavirus in the United States since 1993.
Tom Wilson, the tournament director for the Buick Invitational (Jan. 24-27), said he received assurances from city officials that there were no problems that would affect that event or the Open. "Besides," he added, "the State Preserve is about 300 feet below the golf course."

Jody Kummer, the reserve's supervising Park Ranger, said the virus "is not an issue" for either tournament or for daily-fee players.

"As long as you're in the open, like on a golf course or a trail, you can't catch the virus," she said. "It's only when you're in a closed space, such as a small attic, for a length of time where you can have a potentially damaging contact with the virus. You'd have to climb into an attic, sit on a mouse's nest and breathe for awhile in the closed space in order to be at risk."

San Diego County health officials announced Dec. 29 that blood samples taken from two wild mice caught in traps in November tested positive for the virus. Health officials returned to the field Jan. 3, wearing ominous-looking safety suits, to check traps for more mice. They said results on a battery of lab tests on those mice would be available in about two weeks.

So while Torrey Pines officials might consider Tiger-proofing their course (he's won the Buick Invitational the past three years), there is apparently no need to mouse-proof it.

-- Ron Lux

Members at Winged Foot Golf Club decided overwhelmingly in a vote before Christmas that the U.S. Open won't be returning to their New York club anytime soon. Winged Foot had been considered among the favorites to host the 2015 Open.

The rejection was a setback for the club's board and its president, Len Horan, as well as for the USGA. "Obviously, this is disappointing," said Pete Bevacqua, the USGA's chief business officer. "I think anyone would agree the 2006 U.S. Open was a tremendous success."

The '06 Open was the first hosted by Winged Foot in 22 years, and its success was credited largely to the leadership of Horan. But many Winged Foot members felt the inconvenience of staging a major championship wasn't worth the reported $2 million netted by the club after expenses. Many among that group of members are also balking at the club's proposal for a 20-percent increase in annual dues.

"It's really just a timing issue more than anything else," said Horan, whose presidency ends Jan. 13. Horan said Sunday that the proposed dues hike resulted from the board's decision to reduce guest play and corporate outings beginning in 2008. "It had absolutely nothing to do with the Open."

The members' overriding reason for rejecting the 2015 Open was money, according to sources. It came down to one key difference between the club's deal with the USGA for the '06 Open and the proposal between the two sides for the 2015 Open. Terms for the 2015 Open called for the USGA to pay more up front as a rental fee but for the USGA to take 10 percent more from corporate sales than it did in 2006. According to a source familiar with the negotiations, Winged Foot's profit for hosting the 2015 championship would have been about the same as it was for the '06 Open. That was unacceptable to members, who felt the club should profit more from an Open in 2015 than it did in 2006.

The disruption factor also played a role. In 2006 many Winged Foot members were unhappy not only that they lost the use of the club's West course for the championship, but also the East course, which became the site for corporate hospitality, catering and other elements of infrastructure. Although the USGA picked up the tab for all damages that resulted--reportedly in excess $500,000--the East course remained closed until October, nearly four months after Geoff Ogilvy's dramatic victory and Phil Mickelson's stunning collapse.

The big question now is, does this take Winged Foot out of the U.S. Open picture for good? Probably not.

Bevacqua and Mike Butz, the USGA's deputy executive director, attended a mid-December membership meeting at Winged Foot, where the club's objections were initially raised. "The message we heard over and over at the meeting and since the meeting is that even if Winged Foot decided not to issue an invitation for 2015, an invitation to the USGA [would be welcomed] in the future. The relationship between the USGA and Winged Foot is very, very strong."

Horan agreed. "It was not contentious," he said of the meeting, adding that Bevacqua and Butz received applause at the end of their presentation. "We have a diverse membership at this club. Some of our members who love the East course are just saying, 'Can't we wait a few more years?' Even among the most dissident [members], it was not an issue of not having an Open at Winged Foot. It was an issue of deferring [the invitation].''

Bevacqua also pointed out that Winged Foot in 2015 was not a done deal, and that there are other clubs who can't wait to get in the rota. "The Open is in a pretty good spot," he said.

--Tim Rosaforte

FUTURE U.S. OPEN SITES
2008--Torrey Pines Golf Course (South Course), La Jolla, Calif.
2009--Bethpage State Park (Black Course), Farmingdale, N.Y.
2010--Pebble Beach Golf Links, Pebble Beach, Calif.
2011--Congressional Country Club, Bethesda, Md.
2012--The Olympic Club, San Francisco
2013--Merion Golf Club, Ardmore, Pa.
2014--Pinehurst Golf Club (No. 2), Pinehurst, N.C.