Excerpts of an all too brief radio conversation with former USGA president Frank "Sandy" Tatum. He's authored a book of reflections entitled 'A Love Affair with the Game.' It's reviewed elsewhere on the site. The conversation took place on Saturday morning of the Bethpage Open. Naturally, we talked about the weather and the playing conditions.



Sandy Tatum: You can understand how these guys, having played in the conditions that they're used to playing, find these conditions so challenging that some of them literally can't handle it. Not so much physically but mentally. That's what the Open is supposed to do. It's supposed to challenge them. And, it's certainly doing that.

The Hearthstone Review: I know you have a personal aversion to Lift, Clean and Place and I assume that view is shared by your successors. What would you say to those who may watch this weekend and find that the conditions may warrant it?

Sandy Tatum: Well, you know that's a tough call. And in my view it's got to be virtually unplayable before they allow that to happen and there's another effect I think that if it were my call, Jim, I'd suspend play until I could play rather than allowing them to pick it up and clean it and place it someplace.

The Hearthstone Review: And the rules make some amends for those kinds of conditions.

Tatum: Yes, indeed they do.

The Hearthstone Review: A couple of comments about the U.S. Open. Bob Jones said: "No one wins the Open. Someone loses it." Cary Middlecoff some years later added this assessment: "No one wins the Open. It wins you." Are those accurate?

Tatum: "I think they're very accurate. It may be, however, that Tiger will change those aphorisms because he seems to be able to bring himself up to a state of mind that goes with this incredible talent that he has that causes him to be able to play these golf courses in a way in which they should be played. I think, Jim, that as a matter of fact, that illustrates the efficacy of the Open. If you've got the right combination, and Heaven knows he does, you can take the conditions as whatever they may be and you're going to be able to accomplish them. And the rest of these guys somehow have to come to understand that that's what's going on in the U.S. Open. I think they tend, most of them, sort of - well, not just sort of - very defensive and the consequence is they don't play anywhere near their capacity to play. But then again, that's one of the true challenges of the Open. That's to say, it's the mental game that comes into play in the open and, as I see it, much more effectively than it does in any other event.

THR: You play the course as you find it and you play the ball as it lies.

Tatum: Amen.

THR: This is the first time we've had split starts in our national championship. By all accounts, the back nine at Bethpage opens with some of the hardest holes on the golf course. It also takes a long time to get from the practice facility to the 10th tee to hit your shot. How do you think that went?

Tatum: Well, personally, Jim, I wish we hadn't gone to it but I understand the problem. As a matter of fact, the real problem, exacerbated on this golf course, is these players are now playing so slowly that you have a terrible time getting them around even on the basis that we don't have any weather delays. The first starting time is 7:15 in the morning and the last is 2:15 in the afternoon and that certainly is as late as you can go and still they're not finishing until just before dark. And if there were any kind of a rain delay, then you're not going to get in the round. And I must say, it's a shame because golf courses, many of them and certainly Bethpage is one of them, and clearly it seems to me it's consistent with a Tillinghast design that they start out relatively speaking benignly and they build. One of the best examples I can think of, in addition to Bethpage, is Pebble Beach. It is a distinct disadvantage, it seems to me, to have to start on the hardest part of the golf course. Tiger, I thought, put it into effective perspective when he said that the length of time it took to get from the practice range to be able to tee it up on what is his first hole, the 10th, he's lost his rhythm. I just wish we could somehow find a way of getting around it. But I understand the logistical problem. We don't want to reduce the size of the field.

The only ultimate answer is to cause these guys to play fast enough so they get in a decent round of golf in a decent amount of time.