Even though the 103rd PGA Championship was a thrill (as in Phil) to watch and Pete’s Dye-abolical Ocean Course layout provided a beautiful and fitting test, one wonders if what happened on the last hole will somehow discourage future invitations to host major events.
Hopefully not.
An amazing amount of work went into preparing for the tournament and everything looked great. Of the two PGA Championships held at that venue, each was won by Hall of Famers (Rory McIlroy and Phil Mickelson).
Aesthetically, the course is unique in North America, flush up against the Atlantic Ocean and built out of, and on top of, some of the most beautiful sandy undulations Mother Nature is capable of creating. It’s remote and wild, and even though the area is disturbed by man, somehow it blends in with the natural world.
“I have to say,” said three-time major championship winner Padraig Harrington, “this was probably the best major setup I’ve ever seen. It may have been equaled in the past, but couldn’t have been better. … I’d love to play this style of golf every week and I would be a bit more competitive. … It’s hard.”
Harrington had a very impressive tournament and finished tied for fourth at the age of 49, a year younger than Lefty, who entered the tournament ranked 115th and of course went on to win and become the oldest men’s major winner.
And, if all that weren’t enough bona fides for the Ocean Course, one need only remember that it served as the setting for the famous 1991 Ryder Cup competition, perhaps better known as "The War by the Shore." Ryder Cup play started getting competitive after the decision was made in the late-1970s to allow players from continental Europe into the competition (instead of just those from Great Britain.) Europe subsequently won in 1985 and ’87 and played to a draw in 1989. By the time play began in 1991, Europe had held the Cup for six years after decades of American domination, and both American fans and players had had enough.
Local fans were raucously partisan and actively pulling against Europe, whose players were bolstered by a nascent sense of European pride. Both teams were replete with strong-willed and brilliant competitors, 11 of whom would become Hall of Famers.
A Spanish gentleman, Seve Ballesteros, boldly wielded gamesmanship as a 15th club in his bag, and over three pressure-cooked days there were tense accusations of rule-breaking, conspiracy theories and even claims of exaggerated injury, manipulated pairings and intercepted walkie-talkie conversations.
The circumstances — not to mention Pete Dye’s exhausting layout — stretched the players’ emotional and physical constitutions beyond the limit. This was brutally captured by Mark Calcavecchia’s meltdown over the final four holes (entering them 4-up) and Hale Irwin’s transformation into a zombie on #18.
“My senses became overloaded,” Irwin later recalled for Golf Digest. “I couldn’t process everything. I felt so much anxiety, I was just playing by instinct. … I couldn’t breathe or swallow.”
Irwin muffed a chip on the final hole, turned a ghastly pale color and looked like he was about to vomit.
And then there was “The Putt,” the one Bernhard Langer had to make on 18 for par (to Irwin’s bogey) to halve the entire match and retain the cup. It was a 6-footer, left to right; he decided to hit it firmly to take out some of the break because of a spike mark he thought might significantly deflect his ball off course were he to take the higher road. He misses; USA gets the Cup back.
Anyway, accessibility to the Ocean Course is a problem, but what got people’s attention two weeks ago Sunday was the breakdown in crowd control on that same final hole.
Brooks Koepka (T-2nd) was not amused.
“It would have been cool,” he said, “if I didn’t have a knee injury and got dinged a few times in the knee in that crowd because no one really gave a s#!+ ...”
Then again, neither was Phil, who literally had to elbow his way through and found the experience “unnerving,” yet qualified his observation — nice guy that he is — by further remarking that it was “exceptionally awesome.”
People compare the scene to Arnold Palmer’s 1962 Open win at Troon. There are definite similarities, although two distinct differences:
- There were an adequate number of officers to control the crowd at Troon.
- There may have been less alcohol consumed on the premises at Troon and it would have been considerably less expensive even while accounting for inflation.
Yes, that was a rowdy bunch out there a couple of weekends ago and they weren’t properly managed. Inaccessibility, too few managers and the crowd flying high. Let’s hope the Ocean Course’s sweet perfume suddenly isn’t as fragrant as it was a couple of weeks ago.
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June 03, 2021 at 05:00PM
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Gilbreth column: Impact concerns on Ocean Course crowd control breakdown - Charleston Post Courier
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