Reflections on My US Open Experience

I'm back on my couch at home after an all-night drive from Long Island, and with the US Open final round playing out on TV I thought this an appropriate moment to share my thoughts on our weekend at Bethpage.

Obviously, I would've loved for the weather to have been perfect and to have seen the final round play out before my eyes rather than on my flat screen. However, life can't always go as you'd like, and I still had a fantastic weekend with the USGA.

First, I have to tip my cap to Holly. She overcame blisters on muddy feet in less-than-perfect weather and was the perfect golf-watching companion. My favorite moment with her was when I realized that I didn't have to point out who people were or try to explain what was going on because she'd figured it all out for herself and had actually started to do it for me. She even let me spend $8 bucks on one of those yardage books that I always dream of checking from the fairway. She's a real stud.

My next nod of appreciation goes to the USGA, the Long Island Rail Road and every other agency/person that was involved in the organization of the event. They did an amazing job. The golf courses at Bethpage were not constructed to host a hundred thousand spectators. Parking and transportation could have been an absolute disaster and instead it was an amazing choreography of busses and zig-zagging lines. We took the train on Saturday and drove on Sunday and NEVER waited in a line for more than two minutes. We always were immediately ushered onto a waiting bus and on our way with little idling time. You know that a system has been organized well when it can be executed to flawless perfection by a team of teenagers checking their text messages. Everything that was within human control (translation: everything but the weather) was very well done.

Speaking of the weather, it would be unfair to be handing out kudos without mentioning the Bethpage ground crew. Golf is a weather-sensitive sport, mainly because the course is so delicate in heavy weather. The rains this week were the continuation of three weeks' worth of bad weather. Keeping the course playable and the spectator areas passable was a Herculean labor.

There are a lot of things I could share about the experience, and maybe I'll post again to cover some more, but I'll finish here with my "moment of the weekend." Golf is one of those sports that, in terms of actually seeing the action, there's nowhere better than in your living room at home. When you're actually there, you spend a lot of time scrambling around to see 10% of the major action and a lot more time trying to figure out what's happening in all of the places you can't see. Still, the experience of being there is electric, and the one magical moment that you see in person is worth hours of ESPN or NBC coverage.

Yesterday afternoon Phil Mickelson came to the 18th, where Holly and I were sitting in the grandstand, at -1 for the tournament after a hard fought day of even par golf. Phil is my favorite player, I play with his putter and even find myself waddling like him sometimes when I'm on the course. He is always a crowd favorite--especially true this week because of his wife's publicized battle with breast cancer--and he approached his ball on the final green to a standing ovation from the jam-packed grandstand.

He stood over a 30-footer for birdie and the radio in my ear (a life-saving contraption offered by American Express to cardmembers) chirped about how the crowd would erupt if he found a way to make birdie. Holly quickly agreed with the announcer, noting that she certainly would. I was hopeful but skeptical: we'd been watching players finish the home hole for about two hours and we'd seen A LOT of putts missed on all sides of the hole. As Holly had noted earlier, it was like there was a lid on the cup and your ball would break away from it no matter where you aimed.

Phil was putting towards us, and we could see that he was aiming a full six feet left of the cup. As the ball was on the way, the crowd rose in anticipation. With ten feet to go, it looked like it was going in, and when it did the eruption was instant. My heart didn't calm down for 20 minutes. Here is a low-quality You Tube video I found this morning, (not bad considering it happened less than 24 hours ago) and I am proud to say that Holly and I are just a little part of the roar you hear when the ball finds the cup.

I also learned this week that my Mother-in-Law went to school with Major Champion Justin Leonard's mother. I will now be sure to root for Justin whenever I can.