It’s going to be hard, It’s going to be difficult…It’s the US OPEN at Pebble Beach

The basics of the US Open at Pebble Beach

This tournament isn’t the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am

After years of buildup, it’s finally U.S. Open week on the Monterey Peninsula. If you haven’t been following along to know what the tournament is all about, we’ve got you covered.

The United States Open Championship, or the U.S. Open for short, is golf’s national championship, which takes place annually in June. While the tournament appears on the PGA Tour calendar, it’s conducted by the United States Golf Association.

The upcoming U.S. Open and the PGA Tour’s AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am have much in common but they also have many differences.

“Overall, it’s just a bigger event,” said David Stivers, president of Pebble Beach Co. and general chairman of the U.S. Open, about the upcoming tournament.

According to Stivers, the Pebble Beach Golf Links greens will be faster and firmer, the fairways will be narrower and the rough is going to be a lot higher than during the AT&T Pro-Am. The tournament is notorious for incredibly difficult conditions and course setups, no matter where it’s played.

“It’s going to be a typical U.S. Open,” Tiger Woods said June 1 during a news conference at the Memorial Tournament in Ohio. “It’s going to be hard. It’s going to be difficult. And we know that going in.”

Woods, who won his fifth Masters Tournament in April, will play Pebble Beach Golf Links competitively for the first time since he finished tied for 15th in the 2012 AT&T Pro-Am.

The Richard MacDonald U.S. Open Monument Bronze Sculpture 2000 on display near the driving range at the Pebble Beach Golf Links. It had previously been displayed at Peter Hay Golf Course, which has since been transformed in Fan Central. (Vern Fisher – Monterey Herald)

As one of golf’s four major championships, the U.S. Open brings in many golfers who traditionally skip the AT&T Pro-Am as the sports world focuses its eyes on the prestigious event. The tournament will play host to the top golfers in the world including Brooks Koepka, winner of the past two U.S. Opens and the past two PGA Championships, and 2016 U.S. Open champion Dustin Johnson.

Phil Mickelson, who won his record-tying fifth AT&T Pro-Am title in February, will return to the Peninsula in search of his first U.S. Open title. Mickelson won his first major title in 2004 when he edged Ernie Els for the Masters title. He repeated the feat in 2006 and 2010, while earning his first PGA Championship in 2005. Mickelson won the British Open in 2013, leaving the U.S. Open as the only major championship left for him to complete a career grand slam.

While the top golfers in the world will be on the course, don’t expect to see Bill Murray’s buffoonery or Larry the Cable Guy’s antics at Pebble Beach this week. As opposed to the AT&T Pro-Am, which includes celebrities, athletes from other sports and even the occasional musical performance, the U.S. Open is strictly golf.

Ticket prices and availability outside the U.S. Open Championship merchandise tent in Pebble Beach was open for business to the public on Thursday. (Vern Fisher – Monterey Herald)

The USGA encourages fans to seek autographs during the U.S. Open, but it is prohibited from the time a player is en route to their first tee until the completion of the player’s round.

In contrast to the AT&T Pro-Am, the U.S. Open doesn’t feature multiple events like the Chevron Shoot-Out or the 3M Celebrity Challenge in the days before the official start on Thursday. Fans will be able to watch practice rounds Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday before the first round tees off Thursday. According to the USGA, players electing to play a full practice round generally begin between 6:45 a.m. and 3 p.m.

Gates open at 6 a.m. Monday through Sunday. For the first and second rounds, play is scheduled to begin at 6:45 a.m. from both the first and 10th tees. According to the USGA, the first starting time for the third and fourth rounds depends on the number of players who make the cut at the conclusion of the second round (the 60 lowest scorers and anyone tying for 60th place). Generally, the first group begins play from the first tee between 8-9 a.m.

The U.S. Open differs from the AT&T Pro-Am in that the cut takes place after the second round like most PGA Tour events rather than the third round.

The 119th U.S. Open will be the sixth held at Pebble Beach Golf Links, with previous ones held in 1972, 1982, 1992, 2000 and 2010. In 2000, the USGA celebrated the 100th U.S. Open at Pebble Beach. This year is a celebration of the 100th anniversary of Pebble Beach. The tournament will return to the course in 2027.

The U.S. Open will be played on one golf course, Pebble Beach Golf Links, as opposed to the AT&T Pro-Am that takes place at Pebble Beach as well as Spyglass Hill Golf Course and the Monterey Peninsula Country Club Shore Course.

As fans walk into the championship grounds they will see Fan Central. The area will feature games, booths, photo opportunities and the 37,000-square-foot Main Merchandise Pavilion.

Out near the course, fans will have a chance to take a photo with the U.S. Open trophy.

With more fans and more corporate hospitality, the championship grounds will be covered with far more structures than during the AT&T Pro-Am.

“We’ve built sort of a mini-city in our little town of Pebble Beach,” Stivers said.

When: Practice rounds, Monday-Wednesday. Tournament play, Thursday-Sunday

Where: Pebble Beach Golf Links

Tickets: (Sold-out Saturday, Sunday)

TV SCHEDULE

Fox SportsThursday-Friday: 4:30-7:30 p.m.Saturday: 9 a.m.-7 p.m.Sunday: 11 a.m.-7 p.m.

FS1Thursday-Friday: 9:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m.

LIVE STREAMING

Fox SportsThursday-Friday 9:30 a.m.-7:30 p.m.Saturday: 9 a.m.-7 p.m.Sunday: 11 a.m.-7 p.m.

USOpen.comThursday-Friday: 7 a.m.-6:30 p.m.Saturday: 9 a.m.-6 p.m.Sunday: 11 a.m.-6 p.m.

SOURCE: MercuryNews

June 11, 2019/by Teesnap Developer

News

Pebble Beach turned out to be the perfect venue for McDowell’s game: precise iron play and deadly putting.

Graeme McDowell’s career is back in gear — at just the right time

When Graeme McDowell surprised the golf world by winning the 2010 U.S. Open, he was a twentysomething swinging bachelor just beginning his ascent into a world-class player. Now the Ryder Cup star returns to another Open at Pebble on the cusp of turning 40, married with two kids and a stepdaughter, a partner in a thriving business (Nona Blue, an Orlando tavern) and having just brawled his way out of the longest slump of his career. “It’s definitely been the fastest and craziest ten years of my life,” McDowell said recently in his lilting Northern Irish brogue. “What a ride it’s been. And I’m not ready for it to be over just yet.”

McDowell’s breakthrough at Pebble Beach actually began two weeks before the Open, when he went 64-63 on the weekend to win in Wales, his fifth victory on the European Tour. He spent the ensuing three or four days “celebrating with the boys” at his home base in Lake Nona, Fla. McDowell’s game was so sharp and his confidence so palpable that Ricky Elliott, a pal who now caddies for Brooks Koepka, was all set to plunk down $500 for G-Mac to win the U.S. Open at 66-1 odds.

“I said, ‘Listen, I’m feeling good, but I’m probably not going to win,’” McDowell recalls with a chuckle. “‘Just to be safe, place the bet each way to cover your a–.’”

Pebble turned out to be the perfect venue for McDowell’s efficient game, built as it is on precise iron play and deadly putting. After a second-round 68, he held a two-stroke lead. That night he strolled into Brophy’s Tavern in Carmel, which McDowell calls “the unofficial caddie headquarters of the U.S. Open.” Billy Foster, who was then looping for Lee Westwood, broke out into song: Queen’s “We Are The Champions.” That tune played in McDowell’s head throughout the fraught final rounds.

The Sunday leaderboard was spectacular, with Tiger, Phil, Ernie and Dustin all factoring in the drama. But only McDowell refused to crack. He became the first European winner of our national championship since Tony Jacklin in 1970, and that night wound up, inexorably, in a boozy celebration at Brophy’s. “When I got behind the bar and started spraying people with the soda gun,” says McDowell, “I think that’s when my friends started saying, ‘Okay, let’s get this guy back to the hotel.’”

McDowell made another run at the 2012 U.S. Open, narrowly missing a birdie putt on the 72nd hole to fall one stroke short, and he kept piling up wins, rising as high as fourth in the World Ranking. Along the way he hired the former Kristin Stape to decorate his house in Lake Nona, and then wound up marrying her, in late 2013. A daughter and a son soon followed. “Fatherhood is the greatest thing in the world,” he says, “but it was certainly an adjustment. Golf very quickly was no longer the most important thing in my life.”

Pebble Beach turned out to be the perfect venue for McDowell’s game: precise iron play and deadly putting.

Add in swing and equipment changes, and by early 2019 McDowell was on the outside looking in, with tenuous Tour status and without a spot in the field at the upcoming Open Championship in his hometown of Portrush. All this was the backdrop to the explosion of goodwill that followed his PGA Tour win in the Dominican Republic in March 2019, McDowell’s first worldwide victory since 2015. “It was relief more than anything,” he says. “I was like a flame flickering. I was feeling my mortality. I was becoming aware that all of this could go away very quickly. So to finally win again, a giant burden has been lifted.”

Just like that, McDowell’s expectations are very different for Pebble Beach (champs are exempt into the ensuing ten U.S. Opens) and Royal Portrush (where he has a golden opportunity to play his way into the field at this week’s Canadian Open). Is it time to run out and start placing bets again?

“Well, let’s not get carried away,” McDowell says. “But I was never going to be satisfied returning to Pebble as a ceremonial golfer. It’s not the legacy, it’s not the impact I want to have in this game. I know I have one more big run in me. I have a vision of getting back to the top of the game one more time. How cool would it be if Pebble Beach is once again the launching pad?”

SOURCE: Golf.com

June 7, 2019/by Teesnap Developer