Rose Zhang on Lancaster CC’s elevated third tee final week.
getty photographs
LANCASTER, Pa. — We crave intimacy. The nook bar, the nook desk, the well-known nook at Augusta National, Amen Corner, the place the eleventh inexperienced, the wee par-3 twelfth and the thirteenth tee share a garden. And that was a part of the magic of this U.S. Open at the Lancaster Country Club. It was intimate.
Before he headed out for the awards presentation, Mike Whan, the USGA’s CEO, stood in a roomful of gamers, caddies and relations and requested in a voice loud sufficient to be heard above the din, “Does anybody know how to pronounce Dylan Vallequette? The last thing I’d want to do is go out there and say it wrong.”
The winner’s caddie, and Whan had it proper. Val-ah-ket. The winner takes dwelling a gold medal that depicts Mickey Wright’s candy swing simply past affect and at the peak of her powers. Wright received 4 U.S. Opens. Yuka Saso has now received two. The profitable caddie takes dwelling a plate. Golf, at its finest, has to do the massive issues proper, however the little issues are enormous, too. A medal you possibly can put in your backpack. A plate you possibly can put in your suitcase. An extended surname pronounced appropriately at an awards ceremony.
Some minutes earlier, an LCC bartender discovered her eyes welling when Saso, in a TV interview, famous the sacrifices her household had made for her golf. “It makes me emotional,” the barkeep stated, to nobody particularly. She had seen the golfers come and go all week. The gamers received to know the employees and the employees received to know the gamers. Golf at its finest is intimate.
On Monday, Memorial Day, Minjee Lee turned 28 and the following evening she celebrated her birthday with considered one of her closest associates on the LPGA tour, Wei-Ling Hsu, 29, from Taiwan. (Wei-Ling is 5-foot-2 with a swing-by-God.) They went out for dinner at an earth-to-table restaurant in a small brick inn, the Lancaster Arts Hotel, in lovely downtown Lancaster. For their dessert course they shared a bowl of crème brulee lighted by a single candle.
Five days later, Wei-Ling was holing out on 18, wrapping up her eighth U.S. Open. And behind her, a wedge shot away, Minjee was teeing off on Lancaster’s tenth tee. Members and visitors had been spilling out of various clubhouse perches and its verandah to steal a look. The tenth tee and the 18th inexperienced had been ringed by followers. The circus had come to city. Lancaster was residing giant, in its cozy manner.
Wei-Ling was watching on an outside TV when Minjee made a this-kills-it double on the par-3 twelfth. Her tee shot went within the creek and Wei-Ling groaned. Wei-Ling’s top-25 end was a step in the best course, for her. She had missed each cuts within the two New Jersey LPGA stops in May. Minjee’s tie-for-Ninth end was a main disappointment. She was tied for the lead with two others via 54 holes on this 79th U.S. Women’s Open. She closed with a 78. A very good golf course is more durable than it appears. Enter Lancaster Country Club, proper when golf wanted it. The greens, for one factor. You couldn’t cease the ball close to the opening. Good tournaments activate little issues.
It was all simply so beautiful, even when the scoreboard totals regarded like they had been time-traveled in from 1964. (Golf is meant to be laborious, and U.S. Open golf particularly so!) The course. The maze of rooms that’s the clubhouse. The three-mile drive, from downtown to the membership’s entrance gate, horse-and-buggies, on occasion, within the shoulders of the roads, $20 garden parking within the neighborhood by the course, kiddie entrepreneurs promoting lemonade for a buck a cup.
She received the U.S. Women’s Open. Her gestures afterward additionally had been telling
Claire Rogers
The USGA had one other occasion in Pennsylvania this spring, the lads’s Four-Ball Championship at the Philadelphia Cricket Club, which wrapped up the day earlier than the primary spherical of the Women’s Open. It, too, was intimate. There was Blades Brown, 16-year-old {golfing} sensation from Tennessee. There was Will Wears, who logged many rounds in highschool enjoying alongside his grandfather, Arnold Palmer, on the other aspect of the state, in Latrobe.
The Cricket Club’s third tee and eleventh tee share a rectangle of turf. You can stumble off the fifteenth inexperienced to the sixteenth tee. The dwelling gap performs downhill over a creek and to the farmhouse clubhouse. It’s a Tillinghast course the place golf has been performed for a century. The old-time architects constructed intimate programs. The USGA brings its occasions to strolling golf programs. That’s a essential start line.
By Sunday evening, Wei-Ling’s caddie, Nicolas Pereira, was spent. Wei-Ling is from Taiwan and her first language is Chinese. Nicolas is from Spain and his first language is Spanish. They do their caddie-player factor in English, in order that takes effort. They had been on a course the place one thing can go flawed on each shot, and that can grind on you, for participant and caddie each. They had been enjoying for a medal and a plate — and a probability to maintain doing the factor they do.
Nicolas, a runner, is a research in health, so it wasn’t Lancaster’s rolling hills that had him worn out. It was 4 days of studying swirling winds, the knobs on the greens, his participant’s moods. For Wei-Ling, just about the identical. All these little issues. Golf at its finest is intimate.
Michael Bamberger welcomes your feedback at Michael.Bamberger@Golf.com
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