Jun6 US Open practice

Next week’s US Open is shaping up to be one of the toughest Majors in history, if the latest practice rounds are anything to go by.

Defending champion Geoff Ogilvy played a practice round there on Monday and by the estimation of his fitness trainer Vern McMillan he lost seven balls and shot 85. Drives that just missed the fairway were never seen again.

Vijay Singh reckons 10 over par could be a winning score, and has warned other players not to bother going to Oakmont becauese it’s too scary!  

Stuart Appleyby was on his way  to play a round there earlier this week, but was talked out of it by Singh.

“We were going to go up on Monday,” Appleby’s coach Steve Bann said. “But Vijay said not to bother. He said: ‘you might as well stay home and stick pins into yourself’.

“You’re better off just going there still believing you can play the golf course. It’s one of those ones that the more you look at it the more impossible it seems.”

“This was harder than Winged Foot the Monday 10 days before that tournament,” added Ogilvy, who won the 2006 Open with a 5-over-par 285 at Winged Foot. “I imagine it’s probably going to be harder.”

Ogilvy and other pros were in agreement that 5-over could be a winning score at Oakmont. Ian Poulter, who played the back nine with Woods yesterday, said he would even take it in a second.

“That’s a nice number,” Poulter said. “I’ll sign that right now and go home, thank you very much. It’s a (heck) of a test of golf. It’ll be more than that nice number.”

It’s a number Woods would have gladly taken last year, when he failed to make the cut on Tour for the first time after winning the 2000 Open with a 12-under and ’02 in 3-under.

Oakmont was closed to members on Monday but littered with a handful of PGA players, among them the top-ranked Woods, Australians Adam Scott (fourth) and Ogilvy (eighth), South African Justin Rose (19th) and Poulter (51st).

Woods, his only Oakmont experience coming in 36 holes in late April, teed off from No. 1 around 8:30am. Through USGA officials and an Oakmont spokesman, he declined to speak to reporters.

Forty-five minutes later, an NBC helicopter hovered above the course, shooting footage of each hole for the Open telecast. By 10am., other golfers arrived on the practice range and soon took a loop.

What they all found was a course with thick, heavy rough and fast, rolling greens where it is safer to play from the fairway than near the bunkers.

Yesterday’s conditions were a far cry from the overbearing heat and humidity of 1994, the last time the Open was played at Oakmont. Golfers would welcome overcast skies, a light rainfall and a damp course with soft greens.

“Maybe a little softer than I imagined, but I think that’s probably a good thing,” Scott said. “I think it’s a good setup right now. They don’t need to take it too far from here.

Scott noted that Oakmont is “every bit as hard as Winged Foot was” last year.

“The greens are faster; they were inconsistent at Winged Foot,” Scott said. “If they went faster with the greens here, it may make it maybe a couple shots tougher because the short putts get tricky.”

Which is why the pros didn’t so much play a round as they did tinker with the course, hitting shots from every possible angle to watch the breaks and lies.

“You just have to some imagination around this golf course on certain pins and certain greens,” Poulter said. “There’s four or five greens you need to be really cautious about, the ones that slope away especially.”

If they had their preference, those who played Oakmont yesterday wouldn’t change a thing, save cutting some deep rough and dampening the greens. Wishful thinking, perhaps, as the USGA and Oakmont are both known to make the Open course as difficult to play as possible.

“It’s hard,” Ogilvy said, “but it’s a great golf course.”