Davis On Olympic's 16th: "It will play the way it did for Hogan"

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Ron Kroichick on Mike Davis's meet-and-greet with San Francisco media Monday to get us excited about the 2012 U.S. Open. The big talk centered around the 670-yard tee for the 16th hole.

“We felt this would make it a true three-shotter,” Davis said of the new tee. “It will play the way it did for (Ben) Hogan and (Arnold) Palmer in ’55 and ’66. It will be a big, big par-5.”

What about for Jack Fleck, Billy Casper, Scott Simpson and Lee Janzen?

Previously, the longest hole in Open history was No. 12 at Oakmont Country Club (outside Pittsburgh) in 2007, at a paltry 667 yards.

An unbylined AP story includes many other details on this June's U.S. Open setup and operation.

"The new system undoubtedly makes it harder for outsiders to crash the PGA Tour’s party."

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Sean Martin says good players will make their way to the tour, but he also mourns the likely demise of stories like Q-Schooler John Huh's Cinderella run, which will not be possible if the PGA Tour policy board votes to approve changes (and since FedEx just re-upped for $35 million based on the proposal, I'd say the votes will be there!).
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Hats Off To Golfweek's Bracket Masters

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I'm down at 3881 with a score of 42, so I can only marvel at the two...yes two folks who had Hunter Mahan winning and a bunch of other matches picked correctly in Golfweek's bracket madness.

And with matching scores of 130, they had to go to the tiebreaker picking how many holes the final match would go and "C, MacKay" even got that right, picking 17. Nice going!

And tip of the cap to Golfweek for a smooth running bracket aided by daily update emails. Yet another reason I wish we had more match play.