As far as signature holes go, No. 7 at Olympia Fields Country Club will never call to mind Pebble Beach or Pinehurst for sheer beauty, and it rarely makes players groan in frustration.
No. 7 is pleasing to the eye, if not breathtaking, and a pretty long par-3 at 212 yards. It is inoffensive but challenging. It is quintessentially Midwestern.
From an elevated tee box, players aim downhill at a smallish green, where the topography resembles the buckled pavement of a sinkhole. A tiny creek loops in front of and to the right of the green, which is protected on either side by bunkers.
Most players hit 5-irons in Thursday’s first round of the U.S. Open, but club selection was tricky because the tee box’s elevation makes the hole appear shorter than 212 yards. The pin placement was back and to the right, protected by ridges that seemed to push tee shots away from the flag. Most players aimed left and putted over the ridge. The only reward for going at the pin was the gallery’s applause. Any shot that rolled past the hole was likely to roll right off the green and into the fringe.
The green was decidedly more receptive in the cool morning air, but for every birdie there was something fiendish. Poor Craig Bowden found the creek and made 6. Nick Faldo hit the grandstand, chili-dipped a chip and made 5.
Fittingly, the two co-leaders provided the gallery at No. 7 with their most memorable moments of the day. Tom Watson’s 45-foot birdie putt hung on the lip of the hole for what seemed an eternity, then touched off an ear-splitting roar when it dropped, reinforcing the belief that Watson and ailing caddie Bruce Edwards were up to something special.
Earlier, co-leader Brett Quigley found the creek to the right of the green off the tee. Instead of scouting a drop location, Quigley hovered over his ball, prompting someone in the gallery to say, “It’s not that deep, unless he’s walking on water.”
Indeed, the gallery stirred when Quigley grabbed a sand wedge and went into the water, blasting the submerged ball onto the green. It rolled well past the hole, but he got down in two, and the crowd responded to his hard-earned bogey as if it had been a hole-in-one.
A huge roar broke the morning stillness when Tiger Woods reached the green in two at the nearby sixth hole, a 555-yard par-5. The roar was even louder when he rolled in his eagle putt. Roland Thatcher, in the group ahead of Woods on No. 7, could only sigh in appreciation.
The seventh then became the center of the golf universe. Woods, delayed as Thatcher and his partners finished up, stared at the green, his concentration unbroken. Ernie Els, whose two-stroke advantage over Woods had just evaporated, joked with a spectator. U.S. Amateur champion Ricky Barnes, holding his own with the two best players in the world, already was a gallery favorite, and the response was off the charts when he stuck his tee shot on No. 7 inside Woods’ and Els’, who were within 10 feet.
But all three missed their birdie putts and settled for par, and 16-year-old Tom Glissmeyer stepped up to the tee as Woods’ group moved on. It wasn’t Glissmeyer’s day–he already was 8 over–but the fans showed him as much love as they had Woods when he found the center of the green with his tee shot.
Glissmeyer will not be around this weekend, but he will be back.
At the end of the day, No. 7 had played to a 3.28 stroke average, yielding 10 birdies, 104 pars, 35 bogeys, six doubles and Bowden’s dreaded “other.”
