Phil Mickelson will turn 45 sometime around the 2015 U.S. Open. It sounds like that could be his next chance to exorcise his demons from last year’s Open.

Below is my online story of Winged Foot’s membership extending an invitation to the USGA to host the 2015 Open.

By SAM WEINMAN
THE JOURNAL NEWS

(Original publication: May 31, 2007)
Fresh off the success of the 2006 U.S. Open at Winged Foot Golf Club, the membership of the Mamaroneck club has already turned its sights to hosting another national championship.

After 70 percent of the membership voted earlier this spring in favor of hosting another Open, the club has sent a letter inviting the United States Golf Association to hold the 2015 U.S. Open at Winged Foot.

The invitation is still subject to review and a vote by the USGA’s executive committee. But given Winged Foot’s storied history, along with the large and positive response to last year’s championship, the USGA would likely relish an opportunity to host a sixth U.S. Open at Winged Foot.

“We would hope that they would accept our invitation,” Winged Foot club president Len Horan said.

The USGA has Opens slotted through 2013, and will likely announce the 2014 site at this month’s Open at Oakmont Country Club outside of Pittsburgh.

I spent yesterday morning out at Century Country Club in Purchase doing a piece on the upcoming U.S. Open sectional qualifier at the club on Monday. My advice to golf fans looking to witness the drama of the game away from the spectacle of tournament play is to check out the qualifer, a 36-hole grind that is a much a test of players’ mental strength as it is their driving and putting.

Check out the pairings here if you’re interested. You’ll notice that as opposed to last year’s sectional at Canoe Brook in New Jersey, there aren’t nearly as many players, and specifically, not nearly as many tour players (the biggest name as far as I could tell is the 2002 U.S. Amateur champion Ricky Barnes). The reason is there isn’t a tour event in town that week, meaning most big-name players will be qualifying after the Memorial in Columbus, Ohio or before the Stanford St. Jude Championship in Memphis.

In many ways, though, that makes the qualifier more compelling since it means the handful of guys who do grab spots in the Open field at Oakmont are likely to be players who would savor being there. Among the area players competing are Century’s own Frank Bensel, Trump National’s John Guyton, Mamaroneck native Charlie Meola, Tamarack’s James Lusk, and Rye native George Zahringer III.

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In other news, congratulations to Harrison native and Golf Club of Purchase director of golf Carl Alexander for his second big win of the year in the Met PGA Head Pro Championship. Here’s Mike Doughery’s story on Alexander’s final round 1-under par 70.

The Geoff Ogilvy interview was indeed a success. We spoke for the better part of a half hour, and if he didn’t have to get up and use the bathroom at the end, we likely could have kept going (I have that effect on people, I suppose).

The familiar phrase you hear with someone like the 30-year-old Ogilvy is that “he gets it,” which is another way of saying he’s not so caught up in himself that he loses sight of how good he has it. It’s also a way of saying that if you ask Ogilvy a question, he’s actually going to think about it instead of regurgitating something he’s been programmed to say.

Anyway, much of the material covered in our conversation is for a story and an accompanying audio file that will run prior to his title defense at the Oakmont in less than two weeks. But one part I did want to share now was Ogilvy’s answer to a question I asked about what worries him about the state of golf. He said there were a lot of things, actually, but foremost is how average golf courses feel the need to model themselves after tour venues, in turn making golf too difficult and too time-consuming.

“Regular guys are playing golf courses that are too long, too narrow, too long a rough and all that makes golf take too long,” Ogilvy said. “Golf takes too long anyway. Everyone copies us and we take five hours so they go and take five hours. Golf’s an all day pursuit now, just the average guy goes down to his country club at 8 and comes back at 3. It shouldn’t be like that.”

I’m in agreement, although I’m not sure the blame falls with the golf courses as it does the actual golfers.

For some reason, the tidy four-hour golf experience has gone the way of the hickory shaft, with everyone feeling the need to take 17 practice swings, line up every putt, and stop for a three-course meal at the turn. If you’re like me, and you’ve got a wife and child and an endless list of chores to do around the house, the game is no longer a manageable recreational pursuit but an all-out luxury.

Give me three hours before sunset and a bag over my shoulder, and I’ll take it every time. But unlike Ogilvy, I don’t play gof for a living, so I can’t afford to have it dominate my day.

Greetings from the ultra-posh lobby of the W Hotel in Union Square, where I’m awaiting a sit-down with U.S. Open champion Geoff Ogilvy, and where soothing sitar-dominant music is playing above.

A couple of quick observations:

My story in today’s paper looks at Wykagyl’s preparations for the upcoming HSBC Women’s World Match Play Championship in July—and specifically how that tournament will be different from the Sybase Classic.

I said it when the club first landed the HSBC, and I’ll say it again: this is a definite upgrade for this area, and that is as much a reflection of the unique nature of the match play event as it is the general lack of buzz that surrounded the Sybase. The consistent truth about golf in this area is that you often need to hit fans over the head with something extraordinary to get them excited.

Naturally the U.S. Open at Winged Foot last year was one example. And to a smaller degree, the HSBC, which will likely feature every top player in the women’s game, will be another.

Granted, there is a good chance that an unheralded player will survive the tournament’s six rounds and come away with the title, as has been the case in each of the tournament’s first two years. But match play is such that there will be invariably be some drama along the way.

Like I said, it’s a step up. How big a step up is still to be determined.

It is maybe fitting that on the same week that Johnson Wagner missed his sixth consecutive cut on the PGA Tour, his teacher Bobby Heins persevered through back spasms to make the cut for the third time in four tries in the Senior PGA Championship.

I say fitting because student and pupil are approaching tournament golf from two entirely different perspectives, and yet it underscores what the 27-year-old Wagner may be struggling with right now.

With a world of talent at his disposal, the Garrison product is now confronting the inevitable wall that many young players come across in their rookie season. His season started brilliantly, and yet now it seems like he can’t catch a break, routinely fading on days when he needs to be moving in the other direction. There are invariably some swing flaws to be corrected, and his putter surely isn’t cooperating as well. But what he really needs is to simply learn how to grind it out even when he doesn’t have it.

That’s where Heins come in. After his back gave out earlier in the week, the 56-year-old Old Oaks Country Club head pro could barely pull the club back at times at Kiawah Island. The difference is he knows how to get by without all your tools at your disposal.

It’s something you usually learn over time. And fortunately for Wagner, that’s something he has plenty of.

Even that day last year when a 13-year-old Dakoda Dowd flirted with making the cut in the LPGA’s Ginn Open, this wasn’t far off.

Dowd had played in that event to fulfill her mother’s dying wish of seeing her play against the world’s best players. Kelly Jo Dowd was able to see just that, but yesterday, she succumbed to a several-year long battle with breast, bone, and liver cancer. She was 42

“She’ll die knowing that she was loved,” Dakoda said in an interview last year with The Associated Press.

It’s already beyond impressive when a girl not far out of grade school can compete at such a high level, as Dakoda did when she shot 74 and 82 in last year’s Ginn. But when you throw in the duress of seeing her own mother fight for her life, you wonder how Dowd even pulled back the club.

We as golf writers are not in the business of rooting for players. But I sure hope for the day when I can write about Dakoda Dowd under happier circumstances.

You may have heard of Jacqueline Gagne, the woman who has claimed to have collected 10 holes-in-one—10!—between January 23 and May 2.

The validity of that number has come into question in recent weeks, but Gagne put some of the questions to rest when she added another ace while cameras were rolling on Tuesday.

This is entirely unfair, seeing how I have never even come close to even one hole-in-one. Once I knocked in an 8-iron from 130 yards, but it was my fourth swing, which gives you at least a slight window into the type of game I play.

OK, off to Wykagyl to check out the renovations. More later…

A widely respected golf writer once referred to The Golf Channel as a “24-hour sedative,” which is not exactly a ringing endorsement for its programming.

But that was said before the network landed broadcasting rights for the PGA Tour, suddenly making it relevant, and for golf enthusiasts, dare I say essential. Enter the deal yesterday struck between the network and Cablevision. The Golf Channel will now be available as part of Cablevision iO basic digital cable package, meaning golf fans will now have more Dave Pelz than they’ll know what to do with.

We’re DirecTV subscribers here at Blog Headquarters, so we’ve been privy to the artistic stylings of Frank Nobilo for a while now. I do think there’s a lot of stuff on the network that is utterly superfluous, although that’s to be expected when you’re all golf, all the time. But it is important to have if you want to follow the game closely. And thankfully for many, that will no longer be a problem.

As a nod to our corporate brethren at USA Today, check out this story by Steve DiMeglio on a day in the life of Natalie Gulbis.

Richard Deutsch, USA Today

DiMeglio shadowed Gulbis for a day last week at the Sybase Classic, and the result is a worthwhile window into the life of one of the LPGA’s most popular players—whether she is deserving of that title or not.

The book on Gulbis is that she is a vastly talented player and a surprisingly insightful quote. And yet seeing how she’s still in search of her first win, there’s no question that most of the attention she receives is directly related to her looks. Trust me, if I didn’t cover golf for a living and didn’t have to maintain at least the facade of professionalism, I might be one of those fans ogling at Gulbis from behind the ropes (although my wife might have something to say about that). And yet as someone who is supposed to look at the game from a larger perspective, you can’t help but wonder if Gulbis’ prominence doesn’t undermine what the tour really wants to be about.

Put it another way: last week at Sybase, you had the game’s No. 1 player, Lorena Ochoa. You had the winner of the season’s first major, Morgan Pressel, and you had Meaghan Francella, a rising star in her own right who was raised down the road in Port Chester. And yet who had the largest gallery the first two days? You guessed it: the world’s 31st ranked player, Natalie Gulbis (in fairness, Gulbis was also playing with Juli Inkster and Se Ri Pak, but an informal poll of fans revealed most were there for Gulbis).

This isn’t anyone fault, necessarily. You can’t blame Gulbis for looking like she does, and I don’t think you can even blame fans for plunking down their money and following whomever they choose.

But until she wins a tournament, for some reason it strikes me as slightly creepy.