How Quickly They Forget: 2012 Major Venue Blues!?

Jim McCabe picks a nice mix of storylines he expects to develop in 2012, but clearly his memory his short if he's lamenting 2012's major venues fresh off the single weakest threesome of post-Masters major sites (and I like Royal St. George's!). Congressional v. Olympic Club? Uh, that's the O Club in a 7&6 cakewalk. Kiawah v. Atlanta Athletic Club? Try 9&8!

Whereas having an impressive roll call of winners elevates many courses to iconic stature, The Olympic Club is rather infamous for those Hall of Famers who’ve come up short at U.S. Opens there – Ben Hogan losing to Jack Fleck in 1955, Arnold Palmer to Billy Casper in 1966, Tom Watson to Scott Simpson in 1987 and Payne Stewart to Lee Janzen in 1998.

If you want to defend The Olympic Club, you’ll have to do it while tilted, in tribute to those sloping fairways that confound.

Then again, as golf course identities go, Lytham & St. Annes bunkers are as extreme as it gets. There are more than 200 of them, but there may as well be 20,000. You’ll find plenty of golfers who are passionate about this links, and for good measure luminaries such as Bobby Jones, Bobby Locke, Peter Thomson, Gary Player and Seve Ballesteros (twice) have won Open Championships at Lytham. Yet for all that, it is not St. Andrews or Muirfield, and thus will the summer visit to the Open lack a bit of the usual aura.

So far as August goes, the Ocean Course at Kiawah Island presents a diabolical commute that will not endear fans to this year’s final major. Long and difficult are attributes that lead to high scores, but not necessarily memorable contests.