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Aside from some ridiculous pin placements on Saturday, I thought it was a fine test for a US Open. If they hadn't screwed up Sat. a couple under probably would have won. Like one of the commentators said golf is a game played outdoors. They cannot control the weather and everyone is not guaranteed the same conditions.
I disagree with the sentiment that it shouldn't be played on this type of course because of the effect of the wind & sun or whatever. Fwiw, that would also eliminate Pebble Beach from consideration and probably a couple more great layouts. The wind tends to blow more in the afternoon everywhere. That's how wind works.
They probably could've gotten away with one or the other, but combination of the baked out course and tucked pins came back to bite them.
Where I push back on your comments is control and same conditions....while both are true to a degree, the USGA did have control over the setup Sat. much like they did on Sun...they simply made a mistake...unless there is an act of God situation creating it (like in British Opens) you can't have a situation where a putt from above the pin travels 4' past the hole in the morning and the same putt in the afternoon goes 20-30' past the hole. They did have control over that.
Agreed...Pebble Beach will never be taken out of the rotation, nor should it. Shinnecock won't be taken out of the rotation either, but now with two controversial setups in back to back USO it's hosted one has to question whether the USGA will book it again anything soon.
FWIW, I don't think the players care what the winning score is as long as they own it.
I think part of the issue here is the USGA has been deemed the ultimate test of golf, defender of par, etc. so they obviously feel a need to live up to that. Whereas...in the other majors...they want it to be a true major test, but the score relative to par is not nearly as important as it is for the USGA.
It's going back to Shinnecock in 2026. Hopefully they've learned their lesson that they don't have to do much of anything to make it a tough enough test for a US Open, where the USGA apparently thinks a double digit under par winning score is unacceptable. If the pins were simply in easier locations Saturday I doubt we'd be talking about this.