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The Best Golf Tournament To Watch

I bet some people reading this will think they know what I'm about to say - "The Masters is coming up in a few weeks from now and it is just the absolute greatest". But no - The Masters is a close second and it is my dream to get to go to Augusta National, however my favorite golf tournament of the year is the US Open. There are a few reasons for this, but they all stem from the difficulty of the courses that the US Open is usually played on. Here are some of my thoughts.

The US Open is always played on some of the hardest courses in the country, with some new additions in the most recent yaers like Chambers Bay and Erin Hills, to go along with some of the well-known, rotating venues such as Pebble Beach, Torrey Pines, and Winged Foot. The first thought that comes to my mind in the days leading up to the US Open is usually, "Oh boy I can't wait for all of the carnage". The USGA, who handles the course setup and hole locations, always does the most it can to make the golf course seemingly impossible - growing out the rough 4-6 inches and making it a thick, dense mess; cutting the greens razor short to make them as fast as possible, and picking the most difficult hole locations on the greens.

The US Open is the most relatable golf tournament for fans because it makes the best golfers in the world actually look human. They are struggling to get pars and bogeys , when in most tournaments they are making it look easy with lots of birdies (and eagles). This year's US Open at Winged Foot was no different - there was a lot of volatility in the leaderboard as several times the player in the lead started to colalpse and made a train of bogeys and double bogeys to put himself out of contention. Consistently making pars is usually the key to being in contention at a US Open, and this year only one player finished under par for the tournament - Bryson DeChambeau who ended up winning by 6 strokes at -6. He was the only one to successfully tame the course, just how the USGA and I like it!