Tiptoeing Through Hell: Playing the U.S. Open on Golf's Most Treacherous Courses | 
 enlarge | Author: John Strege
Publisher: HarperCollins
Category: Book
List Price: $23.95
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Rating:  1 reviews
Sales Rank: 1887888
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 240
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.1
Dimensions (in): 9 x 5.9 x 0.9
ISBN: 0060188642
Dewey Decimal Number: 796.35266
EAN: 9780060188641
ASIN: 0060188642
Publication Date: May 1, 2002
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Once a year, when the U.S. Open is played, the United States Golf Association picks a course and then modifies it wickedly, so that even the world's best golfers often must scramble to avoid triple-bogeys. "Nobody wins the Open," a player once said. "It wins you."Now golf writer John Strege reveals how over the past fifty years the USGA has venomously transformed already difficult courses into "monsters." With relish, he also tells what happened to the pros -- Nicklaus, Palmer, Player, Woods, Snead, Hogan, among others -- who hooked shots into the rough, missed putts, and routinely finished over par in this grueling annual competition.When the 1963 U.S. Open was won with the score of nine over par, Arthur Daley of the New York Times wrote, "Every hacker had to rub his hands in unholy glee at such mass discomfiture." Once again, in this irresistible account, today's golfers can experience the same pleasure.
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| Customer Reviews:
The conspiracy lives May 29, 2005
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The truth is out there: the USGA has it in for the pros. The US Open, meant to be the finest test of golf in the US, featuring the greatest of US courses, is also the ground upon which the USGA gets to stretch the limits of par. Par is, after all, supposed to be what a person recieves after flawless golf, plus two putts on the green. Birdies and, gasp, eagles are only for extraordinary play, if that.
Given the advance of players and their equipment, the USGA was forced to fight back in the era of the modern pro. Rough is grown to obnoxious hieghts, courses are remodeled to make them nearly impossible for anyone but that year's "chosen", and even the time of year (summer) can mean death by heat at some of the venues.
This book chronicles many of the most famous modern Opens. Much of the focus is on the star of the tale, the eventual winner. However, a good deal of attention is also payed to how the USGA prepared the course, by putting it in "leather and chains". At times, the writing borders on conspiracy theory, but this may not be far from fact.
Unfortunately, there are a few places that a person trips up on in the writing. The ocassional typo aside, factual errors regarding historical terms and the like also pop up (for instance, a brassie is called a 3 wood in the book, but is usually regarded as a 2 wood, a spoon being a 3 wood). The easy flowing style of the narrative, however, lets you forget about this.
Being a quick read, this may not be a keeper for the bookshelf, but does a good job of priming you for the yearly Open, if you haven't read it already.
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