Open for business  June 12, 2002|By Ed Sherman, Tribune golf
reporter.  FARMINGDALE, N.Y. — If they wanted to play the U.S.
Open on a real public course, they should have held it at a muni
where a good lie is a rumor.  Let's see how the top
professionals fare on fairways that were last cut a week ago.
Let's see them putt on greens with more bumps than a dirt road.
Let's put them behind a painfully slow foursome and see how they
maintain their rhythm for a 5 1/2-hour round.  Then--and only
then--would the pros truly be playing on a public golf course.
The vast majority of public courses bear little resemblance to
Bethpage State Park's Black course, the site of this week's U.S.
Open. The slickly groomed fairways and divine greens hardly
resemble the broken-down tracks most public-course golfers
frequent.  "It doesn't look like [a public course], does it?"
NBC analyst Johnny Miller said. "They could take the Augusta
members out here and they would feel like they haven't had much
of a change from Augusta Nationa