NEWS: Annika Sorenstam to retire at the end of 2008
Annika Sorenstam, the greatest women's golfer of her generation and winner of 72 LPGA events (so far), has announced that she will retire at the end of the 2008 season. MORE
Annika Sorenstam, the greatest women's golfer of her generation and winner of 72 LPGA events (so far), has announced that she will retire at the end of the 2008 season. MORE
• Many of you who know me have learned that I’m a passionate public transportation advocate, so I was disappointed to learn that the U.S. Open local committee has elected not to offer a shuttle service from the Solana Beach Amtrak/Coaster station to Torrey Pines, despite the fact that (a) the station is just 6.6 miles from the course (according to Google Maps) and (b) the Del Mar Fair, which begins on U.S. Open Saturday seems to be able to work something out with the North County Transit District for shuttle service each year. An option is to taxi take a local bus SCHEDULE from the Solana Beach station, or you can join the crowd driving to Qualcomm Stadium where the parking is free and so is the shuttle. However, you should allow at least 30 minutes for the shuttle. Also, be prepared for fair traffic around Del Mar.
Other notes from today’s U.S. Open media conference:
• More than 6,000 people have volunteered to work at this year’s Open coming from all 50 states and 17 countries. It’s the largest volunteer force ever assembled for an Open. Less than four months after the first volunteer request went out, 6,000 people had applied and 2,000 are on a waiting list. “What is remarkable about the game of golf,” said USGA President Jim Vernon, “is the amount of volunteer time devoted to the game.”
In addition to the 6,000 volunteers, 100 golf course superintendents from around the U.S. will lend their expertise on the agronomic side.
• Torrey Pines marks the first time that the event has been held at a truly public golf course on the West Coast (the “truly” adjective differentiates Torrey Pines from Pebble Beach and Pinehurst). The first truly public course to host the Open was Bethpage Black in 2002 (and again next year).
“There’s a message here,” said Vernon. “We [at the USGA] understand the importance of public courses to the game of golf. USGA Vice-President Cameron Jay Rains of San Diego added, “It should be noted that the great success we had at Bethpage Black paved the way for us to be here at Torrey Pines. In a sense, Torrey Pines is the first dividend on Bethpage Black.” The USGA has already slated the 2015 Open for another public course, Chambers Bay, in Washington. “Torrey Pines
• Although there has been a 60-year gap between U.S. Opens in Southern California (the only other one was in 1948 at Riviera CC), three of the next five Opens will be held in the state. The 2010 Open will be played at Pebble Beach Golf Links and the 2012 Open will be held at The Olympic Club in San Francisco.
• That the 2008 Open is being at Torrey Pines is the result of a dream in 1999 that became a unique public-private partnership, said Cameron Jay Rains of San Diego, a USGA vice-president and a member of Friends of Torrey Pines, a group of 29 individuals that raised more than $4 million to finance the South Course’s redesign by Rees Jones.
• The direct economic impact to San Diego from the Open is estimated to be $100 million plus an unknown amount from the television exposure.
• Torrey Pines usually has 62,000-64,000 rounds per year on the South Course.
• When Rees Jones redesigned the South Course, the greens were seeded in bentgrass. They’re now 100% poa annua. “Most courses are trying to get rid of poa,” said Mark Woodward, San Diego Golf Operations Manager (and soon to become chief executive officer of the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America. “But in our cool coastal climate, poa is actually the best grass for greens.”
• Torrey’s fairways are now 100% kikuyugrass and the rough will be a combination of kikuyu, poa and overseeded rye.
• “Our goal,” says USGA Vice-President Jim Hyler, “is to conduct the most rigorous test possible while setting up a fair golf course.” That being said, the USGA does not have a target score." (USGA PHILOSOPHY) “If we do our job,” said Hyler, “the score will take care of itself.” Last year’s winning score at Oakmont CC (the Pennsylvania one) was 285, 5 over par on the par-70 setup.
• For the first time in many years, the USGA will offer a genuine risk-reward hole: the 573-yard 18th hole, which will play as a par 5. However, the slopes around the green will be mowed to fairway height so don’t miss the green or you’ll end up in Devlin’s Billabong (so named for Australian golfer Bruce Devlin, who took six shots to get out of the pond in the final round of the 1975 Andy Williams San Diego Open; he finished with a 10 on the hole).
• The scorecard for the 2008 Open will measure 7,643 yards, although Mike Davis, the USGA’s senior director of competitions, said none of the four days will likely play that long. For the first time since 2000, par will be 71. “Torrey is a longer and somewhat more straightforward layout than recent U.S. Open courses,” said Davis. “The fairways and greens don’t have the crazy undulations that we’ve seen in recent years.”
The third, 11th and 16th holes will all vary in length by 17 to 53 yards. For at least one day, the third hole (195 on the scorecard) will play about 143 yards, downhill, into the wind. In addition, several other holes will use multiple teeing grounds.
• As is the case every year, weather will be an unknown. “The good news,” said Davis, “is for the first time in several years, we shouldn’t get rain. However, we don’t know what will happen in terms of fog or Santa Ana winds. The good news about Santa Anas is we usually get adequate warning. We are hoping for some wind each day.”
• Although the players see Torrey Pines during the Buick Invitational, what they will see in the Open will be a much different course. “The fairways widths will be very similar,” said Davis. “We actually only narrowed four fairways slightly and widened two others. However, the fairways and greens will play much, much firmer than in the winter and the kikuyu, which is dormant in the winter, will be lush in the summer.” Green speeds are estimated to be at 13 to 13.5 on the stimpmeter, two to three faster during the Buick Invitational. “We want to provide a stern test all aspects of the players’ games,” said Davis. “We could have set it up much tougher.”
• The primary rough for 11 feet around the putting greens will maintained at 3 feet (no Pinehurst runout areas here). Beyond that, the rough will be 4-5 inches. The USGA has already decided to lower the rough off the fairways, due chiefly to the kikuyugrass. The first cut of rough will be about 2.5 inches.
• In order to change the greens from bentgrass to poa annua, Torrey Pines aerified its greens 22 times in a three-year period.
• “Our goal,” emphasized several USGA officials, “is to leave the course in much better shape than we found it when we began this process three years ago.
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For the third time in three years, USC will enter the NCAA Championships final as a regional winner after a wire-to-wire performance to win the 2008 NCAA West Regional, which wrapped up play on Saturday (May 10) at the Lincoln Hills G.C., in Lincoln, Calif.
USC, which won the Central Regional each of the past two years (first at Texas A&M and then at Michigan), clinched its 11th straight NCAA Championship final berth with an 15-stroke win for its third consecutive tournament win this season.
Sophomore Stefanie Endstrasser, a spring semester transfer from Purdue, notched her highest finish as a Trojan, tying for third at 5-under 211 (71-71-69), one shot out of first. For the third day in a row, she birdied four times and had only one bogey for a 3-under performance that tied her low round of the season. MORE
Meanwhile, UCLA's women captured the Central Regional. UCLA head coach Carrie Forsyth said before the tournament that she relished the challenge of being shipped to the Central Regional. The Bruins, No. 2 in the Golfweek/Sagarin College Rankings, shot the day’s low score in all three rounds to finish at 3-under 861 to win by 10 shots over No. 6 Purdue.
UCLA freshman Maria Jose Uribe, the U.S. Women’s Amateur champion, shot a final-round 70 to finish tied for first with Purdue’s Maria Hernandez (69).
Read the Golfweek story HERE.
Several current and former SCGA golfers have made it through U.S. Open local qualifying rounds outside of Southern California:
• Poston Butte Golf Club; Florence, AZ
Qualifiers included Ben Fox of Los Angeles (U of Arizona), the 2006 Southwestern Amateur champion; former CIF-SCGA High School champion Steve Conway of Murrieta (formerly of UCLA); and former USC golfer Roger Tambellini.
Far Hills, N.J. – The United States Golf Association has launched an easy online process for individuals from various professional ranks who want to be reinstated as amateurs. Individuals can visit www.usga.org and click on the Rules and Handicapping menu bar at the top of the page, then choose Amateur Status. MORE
Of all the people viewing Anthony Kim’s impressive victory at the Wachovia Championship today, one watched with a touch of wistfulness. Commentators talked endlessly about Kim living in the desert but there’s a back story to the Anthony Kim saga.
Scott McGihon remembers. The three-time SCGA Amateur champion was the boys’ golf coach at Indio High School seven years when Kim moved to the desert to attend La Quinta High School. A year later, McGihon became the La Quinta High School golf coach, but Kim — already aiming for bigger things — announced that he wasn’t going to play for LQHS.
“Of course I tried to talk him out of it,” says McGihon (who by then had won his first SCGA Amateur title). “We played some golf together, but he had his mind made up. Then one day he called me for a putting lesson. I told him, ‘You can have all the putting lessons you want but you’ve got to join the team first.’”
Eventually, relates McGihon, they met at PGA West. “The ball rolled off his putter a little funny,” he remembers, “but he still made everything. It was obvious at that point that he was a great talent, and he’s gone on to prove it.”
Kim went to Oklahoma University (according to Jim Nantz because he liked the atmosphere at Sooner football games), was a three-time All-America (2004-2006) and NCAA Freshman of the Year (2004). He was one of three finalists for 2006 Ben Hogan Award and played on the victorious 2005 U.S. Walker Cup team. In 2006, he finished second in his first PGA Tour event (the Valero Texas Open), breezed through all three rounds of PGA Tour Q School (winning the second stage) and was runner-up for PGA Tour Rookie of the Year last year.
McGihon didn’t watch all of today’s telecast. “I was flipping back and forth between the Lakers and golf. But I did watch the end. It didn’t surprise me.” But he would have liked at least one year with Anthony Kim on his team.
USC second-year Head Coach Chris Zambri was named 2008 Pac-10 Men’s Golf Coach of the Year while five of his players were named to either the first or second teams the conference announced on yesterday.
Sophomores Jamie Lovemark and Rory Hie were tabbed as All-Pac-10 first team, Lovemark’s second such honor, Hie’s first. Selected to the All-Pac-10 second team were junior Tom Glissmeyer and freshmen Tim Sluiter and Matt Giles. No other team had more than a combined three golfers selected to the first and second teams.
USC WEB SITE
The PGA TOUR has announced an agreement to manage the David McLay Kidd-designed golf course at Stonebrae, a private, gated country club community located in the East Bay hills outside San Francisco.
The newly renamed TPC San Francisco Bay at Stonebrae will become the host site for the Nationwide Tour’s new Stonebrae Classic, scheduled for March 30 – April 5, 2009, which will assume the Livermore Valley Wine Country Championship at Wente Vineyard’s spot on the Tour schedule.
The Stonebrae Classic joins two other PGA TOUR events in the region: The Presidents Cup, scheduled to be held Oct. 5-11, 2009, at Harding Park Golf Course in San Francisco, and the Champions Tour’s Charles Schwab Cup Championship at Sonoma Golf Club in Sonoma, CA, Oct. 30 – Nov. 2, 2008. The Schwab Cup Championship will be held at Harding Park Golf Course in 2010 and 2011.
The TPC San Francisco Bay at Stonebrae opened for member play in 2007. The par-72, 7,200-yard layout was designed by Scottish golf course architect David McLay Kidd, designer of Bandon Dunes in Oregon and currently in the process of completing the new Castle Course at St. Andrews.
TPC San Francisco Bay is located at 222 Country Club Drive in Hayward. For membership information, please call (510) 728-7878 or visit www.tpc.com/sfbay
Rickie Fowler of Murrieta, a freshman at Oklahoma State and the nation’s top-ranked male golfer, shot a final-round 68 to finish at 9-under 279 at Whispering Pines GC in Trinity, Tex., and became the sixth Cowboy to win the Big 12 title; it was also Fowler’s ninth consecutive top-10 finish to start his college career. Read the Golfweek story HERE
Tim Hogarth isn’t a member at Lakeside Golf Club but he certainly owns the famed 1920s Toluca Lake layout. The 41-year-old Northridge resident fired a 1-under-par 69 to win his sixth overall and fourth consecutive Kelly Cup, both records for the prestigious invitational tournament celebrating its silver anniversary this year. Hogarth previous won Kelly Cups in 1999, 2000 and 2005-2007. MORE
View the amateurgolf.com report HERE
