“The greens at Winged Food West tumble downhill like a marble staircase”

Posted on by Alexander Rose

Winged Foot Golf Club in Mamaroneck, NY is said to be one of the hardest golf courses to shoot low scores on. And quite fittingly it was the venue of this year’s US Open.

As a matter of fact, there was only one single player in the field prevailing in a sense that he managed to stay under par after 4 rounds in great weather conditions: Bryson DeChambeau, the 2020 US Open champion.

If you want to understand what all players went through these days, suffering from bad scores, across the leaderboard, you should watch this video to get a sense for the course characteristics of Winged Food West and potential traps along the way:

I seriously love these “Every Hole” videos of Golf Digest! If you like these too, then go check out their playlist! You’re welcome.

Any by the way: Can you read a Winged Foot green? Check it out here!

What a show, Bryson DeChambeau!

Posted on by Alexander Rose

Bryson DeChambeau is the 2020 US Open champion and seriously left the golf world stunned about his performance at Winged Foot Golf Club, NY.

DeChambeau is a phenomenon. He’s special in many aspects and with that I’m not only referring to the positive ones. But you could like him or not, that what he’s shown the world last weekend was truly amazing and outstanding — a great show of golf that will have its place in golf’s history books, no question about it!

DeChambeau, presumably the man with the most unbelievable intentional body transformation ever, won the US Open in style: With smashing drives but only 23 fairways for the whole week he managed to get out of these unfortunate and penalizing rough positions and still got to the red numbers eventually.

And that’s worth mentioning: Of the complete field at this year’s US Open at Winged Food Golf Club, truly a tough track apparently, he was the only one (!!) who shot under par. The only one. Let that sink in for a moment. Yes, US Opens tend to be tough and the rough is always set to make people rather cry, but only one person under par is quite astonishing.

And if this wasn’t enough, he won by a 6-shot margin over Matthew Wolff (E) and Louis Oosthuizen (+2). All in all an incredible performance.

Pure dominance. Here are some very interesting statistics:

Continue reading What a show, Bryson DeChambeau!

Dustin Johnson wins US Open and causes discussions

Posted on by Alexander Rose

Last night I fell asleep at around 1am and had no idea what happened at Oakmont a little later. I was watching the US Open coverage when I got too tired and went to bed. Dustin Johnson had just begun his round and Shane Lowry slowly but surely fell apart in his round and his plan to stay on top of the leaderboard. But the most interesting thing happened when I was snoozing away, which by the way is nothing too uncommon that things get exciting at the end of a golf tournament, but anyway…

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Photo: blick.ch

Long story short, Dustin won the US Open in the end, his maiden major title, but something else hit the news very quickly when I was waking up today:

On the 5th hole, Dustin’s ball moved a little and both he and his scorer, Lee Westwood, said he neither touched the ball nor caused it to move in any other way. Rules officials had been contacted and consulted and it took them until Dustin played the 12th to tell him there might be a rule violation and that he should expect a stroke penalty.

Come on, guys! Tell him during the round?! How dare you putting Dustin under such mental pressure and uncertainty tell him and all his opponents that there will be an investigation and decision after the round!

Well, in the end it turned out that Dustin won with a 3-shot lead, so the USGA’s decision luckily didn’t harm much, but imagine it had been closer… imagine what this would have meant for Dustin who was runner up in majors so often.

This is what Dustin’s colleagues had to say (i.e. tweet) during the round:

Continue reading Dustin Johnson wins US Open and causes discussions

Jordan Spieth wins the US Open and we can’t wait for The Open Championship

Posted on by Alexander Rose

Two down. Two to go. #SpiethSlam

Huge congrats to Jordan Spieth who won the US Open in fashion yesterday. I have to admit that I fell asleep during the round at around 3am CET when the guys played their 9th hole (or so). But as I read it has been a fantastic finish with a happy end for Jordan and a much sadder result for Dustin Johnson…

DJ, we feel for you, this has been a great tournament for you and your time will come, most definitely!

Big shoutout to Jason Day who obviously struggled a ton during the round suffering from his vertigo attacks. Seemed like he had a horror round, no wonder he scored a +4 for the day. Hope he will get that sorted.

Much better on the other hand have been playing Charl Schwartzel, Rory McIlroy and Adam Scott who carded a fantastic -6 for the day. Pretty unbelievable when you ask me.

And good to see that golf is in very good hands nowadays, the young and athletic players are a very good flagship to this beautiful sport!

Martin Kaymer: The New Boss

Posted on by Alexander Rose

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The new boss.

A post shared by Golf Digest (@golfdigest) on

He accomplished what very few had anticipated, he managed to fulfill what very few believed: Martin Kaymer, after his astonishing 65s on Thursday and Friday played another 2 great rounds of golf and left the complete field behind him. As a result Martin became the 2014 US Open Champion at Pinehurst No. 2!

What a weekend! What a course and what a show! From a German or a Continental European perspective this is the ultimate result one could ask for. Martin wins his second major, has the 2014 Players under his belt, has been world no 1 for a short period of time – and more importantly – found back his swing, willingness and ability to win tournaments.

After he realised that he’s probably not a complete golfer, he decided to make changes to his swing to be able to shape the ball more and in various ways. That caused him for quite a while some problems getting up and down in many recent tournaments. Now he’s back with his new swing and obviously the hard and tough drill totally worked out. With this form, he’s tough to beat!

With 8 points clear he won the US Open on Sunday. In the absence of Tiger Woods and basically with no real chance for US boys to lift the trophy, the American crowd was… well, let’s call it a bit bored. Plus Martin is definitely not the stage hog some would love to see – he’s just the grounded, modest, very nice chap from next door who happens to be very good at hitting some white balls around a field. But it was a great tournament and he deserves this trophy so much!

I believe Martin will win some other great tournaments in the near future. Whether that’s The Open and hence his third major? I don’t know, probably not, but he’s got the passion and ability now to win again while he played himself back into our hearts…. into mine at least.

All the best, Martin! Can’t wait to see you winning again. And by the way: I’ve put you down again for my dream foursome (see on the right)…

Can Martin Kaymer win the US Open?

Posted on by Alexander Rose

After two days at the 2014 US Open at Pinehurst No. 2 Martin Kaymer sits comfortably on top of the leaderboard with a 6 shots lead in front of his first competitor Brendon Todd. Followed by Kevin Na and Brandt Snedeker.

The question is now if he’s able to keep that distance to all the others to win his second major after the exciting finish at the 2010 PGA Championship at Whistling Straits where he defeated Bubba in a play-off.

This year however the tournament is absolutely dominated by Martin Kaymer. Not one single other player was able to keep up with his birdie pace right from the start. Seemed like he’s still in very good mood after his recent win at TPC Sawgrass. Martin really is pretty much on the run this year! I can’t wait for the weekend sessions to see how this is going forward.

Here are some interesting tweets around the topic, first acknowledgements by one of the greats of the game:

Continue reading Can Martin Kaymer win the US Open?

The funny US Open moments on Twitter

Posted on by Alexander Rose

twitter-iconAfter having mentioned I didn’t have access to pay-TV for watching the US Open I had to stick to internet live streaming… grey zone, I know, but what can I do. I tried to keep up with the action on the course and as well with the action on Twitter, reading all that stuff people had to say about the guys while either watching them from home or inside/outside the ropes. It was tough to do all that all at once if I were on the course I’d really have struggled to get along with all that modern social media. Checking the Facebook timeline is easy, commenting here and there is too. Twitter on the other hand is trickier, because the more people you follow the quicker you have to read, especially during such events like a major golf tournament. Bringing TwitterPics, Instagram, Vine, a proper blog or other things into the equation, that leads to a massive overflow and too little hands/devices/time to deal with all that stuff. Plus, you really lose the joy of watching golf I guess!

Therefore I sticked to Twitter only and it was tough enough to keep up the pace but it was kinda fun in the end and I had some funny moments when I laughed a lot. Let me share some of them with you.

Continue reading The funny US Open moments on Twitter

US Open weekend!

Posted on by Alexander Rose

It’s one of these weekends again: it’s a major golf tournament. None of the major tournaments can be mediocre but the US Open for sure is far from it. The fairways are narrow, the rough is tough and the whole setting is made to fail.

This year it’s pretty much the same but the course is a bit special. Instead of flags they have wicker baskets on top of the stick (read more), instead of a par 72 Merion just offers 70 shots to come round the course, with only 2 par 5s. In addition the course is very short overall, but does that really mean we will see low scores? No it doesn’t! It’s a tough course and it just got that tiny bit easier due to the rain on Wednesday/Thursday. Otherwise it would be again the typical US Open “putting on top of a VW Beetle” like Jimmy Nantz once described it.

Speaking of length…

I will try to keep up with the action on the course over the weekend. Which is not that easy without any TV coverage at all. I don’t have pay-TV and all streaming channels… well, they don’t work properly unfortunately, lets put it that way. Earlier this year at The Masters I had one of these days as well. I haven’t read so many tweets before in my whole life and I got really confused. There are better ways to follow a golf tournament than reading tweets all day I can tell you!

But it could be fun too!