A short while before Bryson DeChambeau won the US Open at Pinehurst, I wrote if this swash-buckling and exciting golfer couldn’t make you watch the LIV Golf League, then nothing would.
I have been proven wrong within a fortnight of pressing publish. Something else will, or could. It’s reported that Pierce County in Washington could soon open talks with the Saudi-funded circuit, the home to one of the most chaotic and controversial US Opens in recent memory.
Don Anderson, executive counsel to Pierce County Executive Bruce Dammeier, has revealed a representative from LIV Golf’s marketing agency “reached out” to Pierce County to start discussions. This has naturally turned attention to Chambers Bay, the course ingrained in Jordan Spieth’s dreams, but the nightmares of virtually every other competitor.
Waiting for the leaders to tee off at 11 pm in the final round of the 2015 US Open and watching through to 4 am at the beginning of my A Levels wasn’t one of my better ideas, but I have fonder memories of Dustin Johnson three-putting the final green to miss out on a playoff and Branden Grace pushing his tee shot next to the railway line on 16 than I do of Pythagoras Theorem.
Venues are booked for the US Open until 2042 and as far in advance as 2051. Although Chambers Bay will host the 2027 US Junior Amateur and 2033 U.S. Amateur championships, it hasn’t been pencilled to host America’s national championship for the foreseeable future.
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LIV Golf Chambers Bay links should be cause for excitement
Reports suggest those in power in Pierce County want to keep the course relevant. Chambers Bay wouldn’t fit the quota of a run-of-the-mill PGA Tour event, so the suggestion is LIV Golf could swoop in and acquire the services of a course that was roundly debated and criticised in some parts nine years ago.
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Golf icon and nine-time major champion Gary Player said Chambers Bay was “the worst golf course I might’ve ever seen in the 63 years as a professional golfer” during that infamous major week, and Henrik Stenson compared the greens to broccoli.
It is easy for fans like me to sit and revel in the anguish of professional golfers, and pushing major venues to the edge of chaos is a trend that would dampen the enthusiasm of players and spectators alike. But that tournament sticks in my mind fondly and stimulates specific memories of my teenage years I’d never otherwise remember.
I want my Chambers Bay back. The contours and the colours of this Robert Trent Jones Jr masterpiece were nothing like I’d ever seen before. The fairways were beige at best and a view from the clouds would have made the terrain look like the BBC weather map on a Summer’s day.
The rough was grim and the course played brutally. It was brilliant. The views off the coast on the TV broadcast were staggering. That US Open Spieth won almost a decade ago and the one just been at Pinehurst are the best majors I have seen. Chambers Bay will forever be near my golf-shaped heart.
While Anderson outlined that Pierce County must be “careful” and that LIV Golf “has its own issues though, golf politics, world politics-wise,” there is also a determination to maintain Chamber Bay’s status as a top golfing destination.
“Anything that gets on TV is great – With any business, you have to adapt to the marketplace. There may be other things involved,” Anderson said to the Tacoma News Tribune. For anyone who shares my excitement and anticipation for Chambers Bay returning to the mainstream golf scene, our excitement should be tempered, as this story is in an embryonic stage.
LIV Golf wants to be louder, to be different and to break the mould of this game of tradition and institution. What better way to separate itself even more and draw eyes than to add a course to its schedule that was so perfectly polarising?
There was a time when I never thought I’d see Chambers Bay again. Now, I can dream.
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