6 USGA Championship Blunders

With all eyes on USGA during U.S. Open week, we take a look at six of their biggest championship blunders.

2015 U.S. Open – Chambers Bay Greens Debacle 

 

I look forward to congratulating the 2015 US Open Champion very soon, I simply didn’t play well enough to be remotely close. This is not sour grapes or moaning or any of that crap. It simply the truth. Mike Davis the head of the @USGA unfortunately hasn’t spoke the truth about the conditions of the greens. I feel very sorry for the hundreds of greens staff who spent countless hours leading into this week and this week doing there best to have it the best they could and I thank them for that. But look at the picture. This was the surface we had to putt on. It is disgraceful that the @USGA hasn’t apologized about the greens they simply have said. “we are thrilled the course condition this week”. It wasn’t a bad golf course, In fact it played well and was playable. What wasn’t playable were the green surfaces. If this was a regular PGA tour event lots of players would have withdrawn and gone home on Wednesday, but players won’t do that for a major. They were simply the worst most disgraceful surface I have ever seen on any tour in all the years I have played. The US Open deserves better than that. And the extra money that they have earn’t this year from @FoxSports, they could easily have relayed the greens so we could have had perfect surfaces. Simply not good enough and deeply disappointing for a tournament of this magnitude. I don’t like it when people lie on camera to try and save face. And to all you fans that paid good money to try and watch us play golf but couldn’t see anything on most holes because it wasn’t possible to stand on huge slopes or see around stands, I apologize and I’m sorry you wasted your money traveling to be disappointed. I hope we all learn something moving forward to not have these problems in the future. Happy Fathers Day.

A post shared by Ian Poulter (@ianjamespoulter) on Jun 21, 2015 at 6:13pm PDT

The USGA brought the 2015 U.S. Open to Chambers Bay in Washington with high aspirations. Unfortunately, they are also the ones who are to blame for the poor conditions of the greens. Ian Poulter’s rant above sums up the majority of the players’ thoughts on the week. Bottom line, they were atrocious. Here’s basically what happened. Because the greens were slower than they wanted in the months leading up to the event, they made the decision to cut and roll them. However, due to a change in the weather, the greens baked and browned out much quicker than expected. They continued the water them up to and through the event, however, the damage was already done. 

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