The Debriefing: The 2007 U.S. Open, an Exercise in Schadenfreude

The Debriefing is a column that runs every weekday at 9:00 a.m. here on FanHouse. It goes deep into one issue and then bounces around to a plethora of smaller ones ... and does it all in a way that will make you feel like the prettiest girl at the cotillion. Bookmark this page, and visit daily.



The USGA really outdid themselves this time. They usually make a hell of an effort every year to make the U.S. Open course as difficult as it can be ... they move the tees back, they dry out the greens, narrow the fairways, and let the length grow to roughly the same length as Anderson Varejao's hair.

But his year at Oakmont, they've taken things a step farther. In addition to the 300-yard par 3, the fairways as wide as bowling lanes, the world-famous church-pew bunkers, the wrist-breaking rough, and the greens like greased glass, they've also added live alligators on every tee box, replaced all greenside bunkers with sarlacc pits, and have stationed unshowered escaped convicts off of every green, ready to rape and murder the entire family of every player who makes bogey or worse.

Personally, I think that last one is going a little bit too far.

Tiger Woods says Oakmont's greens will be the toughest he's ever played. Paul Goydos says when you finish the round, it feels like you've just gone 12 rounds with Muhammad Ali. Sergio Garcia describes the course as "not too bad for a par-78." Most expect that the winner of the tournament will be somewhere between 5 and 10 strokes over par.

What is it with this recent obsession with making every major golf championship so difficult? It's like the course designers are just trying to top one another with the brutal nature of their tracks. "Hey, the average score at my course was 78." "Oh yeah? Well Fred Couples went into a severe clinical depression when he saw the rough at my course." "Big deal! Craig Stalder imapled himself with the 18th pin after a round at my course. I rule."

I understand that adjustments need to be made to compensate for advances in golf ball and golf club technology, but when is enough going to be enough? If things carry on the way they are, we'll probably never again see someone catch fire and shoot a 31 on the back 9 to stage a dramatic comeback in a major tournament.

People like seeing those things. There's nothing wrong with spectators enjoying themselves at a golf tournament. There's nothing wrong with birdies.

The winners these days are the guys who avoid the huge mistakes, and generally screw up the least. They taking victory laps around the 18th green anymore, high-fiving fans like Hale Irwin did. These days, the winners look morose when they pick up their giant checks, exhausted from four hours of scrambling for par. They're just happy to be getting the hell out of there. We may never see the bull dance again.

And don't get me wrong, every now and then, it's fine to have a ballbreaker of a tournament. For a change of pace, sure, let's make the course impossible for even pros. But this should be the exception, not the rule.

Zach Johnson just won the Masters at +1, the highest score to ever win it. Oakmont's scores will be considerably higher. The British Open is being played at Carnoustie, where the last winner finished at +6. The PGA is tentatively scheduled to be held in a secluded part of the African rainforest that has yet to even be seen by human eyes. It's the kind of place where Bear Grylls doesn't even have the stones to go. Upwards of 20 golfers are expected to die.

Watching major golf in 2007 is like watching Fear Factor. The show's contestants are young, attractive, and athletic ... and people tune in to watch because they hope that Joe Rogan is going to make these pretty people eat sauteed gorilla turds. On some sadistic level, it appeals to us to see the more fortunate among us, even if they're perfectly nice people, suffer.

But that gets old. At some point, I'd like to see them go the other way. Play a major tournament at some dumpy municipal course in Iowa with 400-yard par 5s, 280-yard par 4s, and greens that are perfectly flat and soft. The course plays the same for everyone, be it +10 difficult or -60 easy.

We watch sports to see phenomenally-talented people do things that normal people can't do. I don't know anyone who can throw a sixty-yard strike to Marvin Harrison. I don't know anyone who can take Larry Hughes off the dribble (actually, I might). And I don't know anyone who can shoot 65 on a Sunday of a major golf tournament.

And this weekend, that lat statement would still be true, even if I knew Tiger Woods.

If I want to see someone putt the ball off the green, duff it 20 yards out of the rough, and throw his golf bag into a pond in a tearful fit of anger, I'll call up my buddy AJ.

There is only one sport where it's appropriate to add this kind of degree of difficulty, and that's women's wrestling. A tub of baby oil, KY Jelly, lime Jello, or creamed corn can only serve to make it a fair, beautiful, and natural competition.

At the end of the day, golf shouldn't be about punishment, it should be about dealing with pressure, shotmaking, and scoring. It should be about harnessing in the good energy ... blocking out the bad. Harness, energy; block, bad. Feel the flow. Feel it. It's circular. It's like a carousel. You pay the quarter, you get on the horse, it goes up and down ... and around. Circular. Circle. With the music, the flow. All good things.

This weekend's U.S. Open will be nothing like that beautiful carousel ride, and that's a shame.





David Robinson, Taylor Hicks, and Bill Walton all pose together for a picture in Cleveland's Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame, a place where, I firmly believe, they should never even let Taylor Hicks in the door. I guess an exception could be made if they were having some kind of a dork contest. By the way, just because I'm curious ... how high do you think Bill Walton is in that picture?







"I never looked at it one way or another. . . . Of course, dog fighting is much more extreme, but you can equate it to horse racing. You have animal activists that don't condone horse racing. They feel that the horses are being tested brutally or whatever the situation is. For me, I'm not an animal activist and it's to each his own."

- Jets linebacker Jonathan Vilma on WFAN (courtesy of Pro Football Talk), thinking along the same lines as The Debriefing ... sort of, if The Debriefing thought both horse racing and dog fighting were perfectly acceptable.




Pacman Jones. Congratulations, Pac, on the very special accomplishment of not biting anyone. I don't like to brag, but I didn't bite anyone yesterday, either. See your left arm, and how there are no human bite marks on it? Yep, that's my doing. It just a natural gift that I have.

Pacman had been suspected of biting someone during a scuffle in the now-infamous "making it rain" incident outside of that Vegas strip club. And at this point, with Pacman ... any small victory is worth celebrating.



Dan Wheeler. The Astros held a 3-2 lead over the A's heading into the 8th inning, until Dan Wheeler made his presence felt. He gave up 4 hits and 4 earned runs in 2/3rds of an anning, and then topped it all of by shoving Houston starter Chris "I Wanna Talk To" Sampson in the dugout afterwards. I bet Wheeler listens to rap music.



7:00, VS. NHL Awards.
8:00, TBS. MLB. Atlanta Braves @ Minnesota Twins.
8:00, ESPN. Golf. U.S. Open, Best of First Round.
8:00, ESPNU. Northwoods League Baseball. Green Bay @ Madison.
9:00, VS. Boxing. Hasim Rahman vs. Taurus Sykes.
9:00, ESPN2. MLS. FC Dallas @ Real Salt Lake.
9:00, NBC. The Office. It's Diwali!
9:00, ABC. NBA Finals. The End of the 2007 Basketball Season.