| | 
| | | 
| Ready for an Exciting Journey into a Far Distant Future | by Derek Lawrenson
What will we all be doing by the year 2016? Will we be driving from the tee with plutonium-headed woods, striking golf balls made of kryptonite to par 4s measuring 650 yards long? Will Tiger Woods be claiming his 50th major championship?
The date feels so far in the future as to belong to an age only of guesswork and speculation, but one thing is certain and that is in September of that year the golfing world will settle its attention on the small Minnesota town of Chaska and a course called Hazeltine.
Yes, the Ryder Cup Matches will be headed in that direction, no doubt still absorbing our attention with its heady mix of sublime skill, intoxicating adrenaline, and controversy.
And say what you like about The PGA of America and the European Ryder Cup Board, you cannot fault them when it comes to forward planning. Every venue for every biennial contest from now until Hazeltine is known.
What a turnaround this all represents in a little over 20 years, from a time in 1981 when Walton Heath had to step in at the last minute as a substitute venue. Now we know the next eight venues, and all will taste the unique atmosphere of the Ryder Cup Matches for the first time.
Between them they represent a mix of the old and the new, from America's great Midwest to one of the most idyllic spots in Scotland. Three new states in America and two new countries in Europe will be visited, places that are going to send the popularity of this grand old contest soaring beyond the map.
There is a link, too, between The De Vere Belfry now and Hazeltine way over yonder. Both were heavily criticized when they first opened, but one man helped to change perceptions in both cases and his name is Tony Jacklin. Certainly no one on this side of the Atlantic will ever forget his inspiring captaincy of Europe's team here in 1985 that really established The De Vere Belfry as a place to play and be seen. Nor his seven-stroke triumph in the U.S. Open at Hazeltine in 1970.
This journey into the future begins in 2004 at Oakland Hills, situated in the environs of Detroit. It is lazy journalism to refer to a course these days as a monster but this was the original, christened, or so the story goes, by Ben Hogan after winning the U.S. Open there in 1951.
Perhaps it would be stretching things to have called it a great course at that point. In the words of the American writer Herbert Warren Wind, it had started out as "merely a good course" but was then transformed by Robert Trent Jones into one that was "too severe even for the professional elite." Now it has mellowed with age into "one of America's finest and fairest tests of golf," he concludes.
The best is saved for last as well. The 18th is already considered one of the great finishing holes, but after three days of Ryder Cup competition it will become legendary. A long, treacherous par 4 with a slippery, downhill putting surface, this is a hole that will make heroes of a select few and leave many others with wounded pride.
It is probably fair to say that if the K Club had not been considered fit to host a Ryder Cup then the whole project would have been a failure. Certainly the players who are selected for the 2006 match in Ireland are going to enjoy themselves as never before. Tom Lehman considers the hotel the best in the world, and he is not alone.
As for the course, it is reminiscent in many ways of The De Vere Belfry and is similarly equipped with a perfect match-play hole to finish, a wonderful par 5 where the challenge is whether to go for the green in two, and take on the water that protects the left-hand side. The K Club was designed by Arnold Palmer. Do you think he might have relished having a bash for the green in two?
Valhalla is already familiar to us through its hosting of two PGA Championships. In truth, the 2008 hosts, situated on the outskirts of Louisville, Ky., attracted some criticism before the 2000 PGA Championship because the other major championships in that millennium year were at the storied venues of Augusta, Pebble Beach and St. Andrews. How could it possibly compare?
To which one riposte might be: Which major championship produced the most thrilling finish to the most compulsively watchable golf tournament since the 1999 Ryder Cup? Which venue came across as perfect for match-play golf as Tiger Woods and Bob May slugged it out over the final few holes of regular play and the subsequent playoff?
You may remember that Wales and Scotland had quite a tete-a-tete last year as to which should host the 2010 contest. In the end, you could say that both were declared joint winners. True, only one will host it in 2010, but you could hardly describe the award of the 2014 match to Scotland as a consolation prize, could you?
First up, then, will be Wales in the shape of Celtic Manor, the pride and joy of Terry Matthews, and those who doubt that it will be a suitable venue simply do not know the man. Believe me, whatever its limitations now, Celtic Manor will shine in 2010, because Terry will make it so.
The other winner was Gleneagles, not the King's Course that we know so well but the PGA Centenary (formerly the Monarch's), a modern course for the modern age that was built by Jack Nicklaus.
In between, the 2012 Ryder Cup visits Medinah, near Chicago, long considered one of the great U.S. Open sites, the place where in 1990 Hale Irwin, age 45, shed most of those years, remembering his days as a college footballer as he did a lap of honor around the 18th green. No doubt that moment will be recalled again, as will Sergio Garcia's hop, skip, and jump on the 16th hole at the 1999 PGA Championship, when he took Woods to the limit of his considerable capabilities.
And after Hazeltine in 2016, what then? The promise is for the Ryder Cup Matches to continue to seek out new frontiers, to explore Continental Europe for only the second time, be it Sweden, France, Germany or wherever.
Copyright 2002 The Official Ryder Cup Journal. All rights reserved.
|
| | | | |
