Professional golfers can get famously angry about the difficult conditions at the US Open, notorious for punishing a player’s smallest error. The Open, which moves around to a number of the nation’s most challenging courses, returns to Shinnecock Hills in Long Island, NY for the 2018 championship. While every US Open venue is set to 11 on a difficulty scale of 1-to-10, Shinnecock has traditionally been one of the hardest of the hard. This year, players will have to steel their nerves right through to the brutal end: witness in the video below what a golf ball does on the 18th green after merely being dropped. Yup, it rolls right off the green.
Don’t be surprised to see the greatest golfers in the world unable to keep the ball on the green at #18 this weekend. Especially as the pressure mounts. Fans will definitely hear some comments from the players about how it’s “tough but fair” and also a few indications that it’s more tough than fair. Look for the announcers to make reference to former USGA official Sandy Tatum, who ran the U.S. Open committee back in 1974. That year Winged Foot (also in New York) was so difficult that the US Open was nicknamed the “massacre at Winged Foot.” Was the course too tough? Tatum simply said: “We’re not trying to embarrass the best players in the world. We’re trying to identify them.”
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