In 1894 two clubs, Newport Country Club and St Andrew’s, the New York one, both declared their tournament winners as the ‘national amateur champion’. So later that year delegates from those two clubs along with Chicago, Brookline and Shinnecock Hills met in New York to form a national governing body – and so the USGA was founded.
The first US Amateur was played at Newport and the second at Shinnecock, strangely the only time it has visited the latter.
The US Open followed the same path and this year we are back at Shinnecock for just the fifth time. The championship will return again in 2026.
Shinnecock has much to boast about; it is generally considered to be the earliest ‘links’ in America, the oldest incorporated golf club with the oldest clubhouse in the States and there is no dark past with women members. From day one they were admitted into the club.
We have a nice back catalogue of winners with Ray Floyd winning his fourth and final major in 1986, overcoming a three-shot deficit on Greg Norman who led going into the Sunday of all four majors that year.
Then, in the 100th playing of the championship in 1995, Corey Pavin hit that 4-wood to the last to batter Norman into second place.
And the course will always be found in the top 10 of any self-respecting Top 100 courses in the world – it’s that good.
But say the word Shinnecock and most all of us think about is what happened in 2004, the last time the USGA came to town.
Phil Mickelson said: “I played some of the best golf of my life, I hit some of my best shots, I putted better than I probably have ever putted and I still couldn’t shoot par on Sunday. That, surely, cannot be acceptable.”
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And he finished in second place.
Tiger added that the USGA had ‘lost it’.
It’s likely you don’t remember the name David Roesch or have ever heard of him but the Hooters Tour veteran was one of the stories of the week in 2004. Come the Friday morning the 30-year-old was on the front page of the New York Times.
Roesch came through local qualifying at Lake Geneva and headed to Old Warson in St Louis for sectional where two places were up for grabs from 36 hopefuls.
“It was hot, about 95˚, real humid and a really hard course,” said Roesch, now a teaching pro back home in Wisconsin.
“I had no expectations. I wasn’t playing that great, I was grinding on the mini tours at the time, shot 72-71 and won it,.”
DA Points and Notah Begay missed out by one.
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Roesch, whose biggest pay cheque was $20,000 for a Hooters Tour win in 2002, was off to the US Open.
“I’m a friend of Zach Johnson so we had a practice round together and Davis Love joined us so that was awesome and I hung out with Zach a little bit. I was a TaylorMade player then so I met Sergio Garcia, Mike Weir and played with some big names, I did that on purpose.
“I started on the 10th and I birdied four of five holes on my opening nine and I was third after day one as there was a rain delay.
“I played really good, made the cut after a 73 and in the third round I was right behind Tiger so I got to watch him from the back seats.
“Everybody runs ahead so there weren’t many watching us but I was just enjoying the moment, it was all a wonderful experience.”
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Roesch was round in 74, six over after three days, and still in position for very respectable finish and a huge pay day.
But Shinnecock was on the turn and was set for one almighty final day in more ways than one.
A handful of players, including Japan’s Shigeki Maruyama, putted off the 7th green on Saturday which led to Walter Driver, the chairman of the USGA championship committee, to call a meeting at 8am on Sunday.
The jungle drums of the players’ dissenting voices were beginning to beat in unison.
The 7th at Shinnecock is called Redan after the 15th at North Berwick. A Redan hole will typically have a green that slopes downwards and away from the entrance and the contours will get the ball to the hole.
The hole measures 189 yards with a slightly raised green which is at a 45˚ angle from the tee. On the Tuesday Garcia said that anyone hitting 17 greens should be rounded up to 18 as nobody would find the 7th.
The prevailing wind is in the players’ face but it turned on Saturday and was right to left which, with a baked-out green, was already beginning to cause more than a few headaches.
On Saturday 27.3 per cent of the field found the green which had been rolled by mistake, according to Driver. He said the order had been not to get the roller out.
Jerry Kelly was fairly blunt in what he thought of that: “They lied. They said: ‘We told them not to roll that one’. Talked to the superintendent. Superintendent said: ‘Hey, I’m not getting in the middle of this. They told me to roll it’.
“They’re trying to put blame, because of their stupidity, on to somebody doing a good job. This is the USGA’s fault and it is every year.”
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After the Sunday morning meeting the USGA decided to move the pin from seven paces on and seven from the right to nine on and 10 from the right. Driver described it as its ‘most benign’ location.
JJ Henry and Kevin Stadler, out first, both made triples.
“I had two feet for a par and ended up with a six. It hit a spike mark, catches the lip and winds up in the bunker,” explained Stadler, who had an 85.
Up next were Billy Mayfair and Cliff Kresge – Mayfair, who before his second shot made the sign of the cross, putted off the green but still made bogey, Kresge made a standard six.
Play was delayed for 10 minutes, a crew member dragged a hose to the green and sprayed it with water.
“You’ve just got to do the best you can to make it as fair as you can,” Driver again explained.
And the players’ view?
“I don’t even think the water began to seep into the ground,” said Mark Calcavecchia. “I think it just kind of beads up and rolls off like a waxed car.”
The 104th US Open was turning into a bit of a farce.
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Our friend Roesch, meanwhile, had started nicely despite the testing conditions.
“You could feel that the humidity had dropped and the wind had picked up so there was some dryness in the air and I was really hoping to stick to my game plan of where to put my ball.
“Then I got out there and realised that the greens were two to three feet quicker than the first three days and the ground was now so firm.”
After six holes he was still level for the day, thanks to an eagle at the 5th, and on the periphery of the top 10.
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And then Shinnecock took a big chunk out of him.
“The golf course kind of got me. It was so hard to hold the ball on the 7th green, it had so much slope on it. I am pretty good at preparing my strategy, I tell my students that they have to have high golf IQs so I wanted to hit it left side or even in the left bunker.
“I ended up in the bunker but I wasn’t disappointed and I missed from 10 feet. It was almost impossible to get the ball to stay on the green and then even to two-putt.”
After eight groups the scoring average was 4.25, it ended up at 3.65 which was only the fourth-hardest on the course.
Roesch made four more pars the rest of the day as he turned in an 80. Which, in comparison, was just fine.
The grim facts were that, by the close of play, only 17.2 per cent of the field hit the 7th green and the average score was 78.72 for the day. Other greens were watered as the day went on but it was too little, too late as 22 players fared worse than Roesch on Sunday.
“I hit a lot of good shots where I made at least a bogey. I can’t speak for the USGA but the greens were so firm and so fast that, I’m not going to say it was like playing on concrete, but it was close to it. Being from Wisconsin I have played on frozen greens and I’ve played on snow but this was something else.
“I kind of thought this was normal as it was my first Open experience. Later on I found out that this was the highest scoring average for a final round.”
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But there was a winner in Retief Goosen, who got it round in 71 to finish at minus four (nobody was under par on Sunday) to beat Mickelson by two. The left-hander birdied 15 and 16 to lead by one but then three-putted from five feet at 17 while the South African, playing behind, birdied 16 and that was that.
“To finish under par was truly amazing. When they replay the round I’ll always watch and Retief had such a good game plan; he hit irons off the tee where I didn’t see that shot and he one-putted so much and that was the only way you could shoot under par,” Roesch added.
“Personally I like a bit of the USGA’s approach where even par is a winning score – that’s golf, you’ve got to be smart.
“At Shinnecock they went too far and they realised it and most of the players were complaining and for good reason. Most times a good shot will get rewarded but not many got rewarded that day.”
Not that the experience has put Roesch off Shinnecock or the US Open in general.
“I still get out the medals from qualifying and the New York Times article and I’ve framed the pieces in the local papers.
“I have played a lot of the Top 100 courses in the States and I would say it is the best. Obviously it has a special place in my heart but it is a great test of golf, a great layout with so much variety and you’ve got to hit different shots.
“I’m going to try and qualify again this year.”
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