US Open Thoughts After Three Rounds

There is nothing like a US Open on the west coast to assure that golf fans in the eastern time zone will be glued to their couches and TV sets for four straight days of prime time.  Add the fact that this year's Open is being played at Pebble Beach, probably the most photogenic and beautiful golf course in the world, and, well, that makes for great viewing.

Some random thoughts.....

The coverage on Fox has been outstanding.  Great shots  by the camera folks and, for the most part, pretty good announcing  by the team led by Joe Buck, even though once in awhile he thinks he's doing an NFL game.  The shot track feature is fabulous as are those lines that they superimpose on the greens that tell you how the putts will break.  Wish I could have that on the greens when I'm lining up putts.

One quibble with the announcers.  Advanced metrics statistics, you know, like the ones that are so stultifyingly boring on baseball broadcasts, are beginning to creep into golf telecasts.  When they tell me that Pete McDuffer has 6.57 "Strokes gained putting"....just what in the hell does that mean?  

On the bright side, we don't have to listen to Peter Kostis drone on about this-or-that guy's degree of shoulder turn while looking at the Konika Minolta BizHub Swing Analyzer.

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Speaking of the announcers, it was cool when CBS' Jim Nantz turned up for a brief segment in the Fox booth yesterday with Buck and Paul Azinger.  Nantz lives in Carmel near Pebble Beach, so it was a good thought to allow for a network crossover and have him on.  I was disappointed, though that he didn't greet us with an "Hello, friends."  I also found it interesting that he said that Pebble Beach and St. Andrews are the best and most iconic courses in all of  golf.  That's it, that's the list.  I wonder what the green jacketed Poo-Bahs at Augusta National thought when they heard that little bon mot from CBS' "Voice of The Masters"?  Those dudes have been known to ban announcers from their little tournament for similar sacrileges.

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Maybe the Fox on course microphones are more sensitive or maybe there are just more of them, but from what I am hearing, the galleries at Pebble consist of the biggest bunch of yay-hoos around.  Barely two or three minutes of any portion of the telecasts pass with out hearing some jerk scream out "GET IN THE HOLE" (even on approach shots from 240 yards out).  There are especially hot rooms in Hell reserved for the idiots who scream that out at golf events.

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Speaking of idiots, how do you like that Jordan Speith?  He came upon the scene in 2015 when he won the Masters and the US Open at the age of 22, and was hailed as the future face of golf.  Since then, he has been seen acting out with some of his fellow tour players like a bunch drunken frat boys on a ritzy golf resort, taking forever to line up his shots and hit the ball, regularly rinsing balls on Number 12 at Augusta, and, this week at the Open, for petulantly blaming his caddy when he, Speith, hit back-to-back God-awful shots in the first round.

Swell headed, over-entitled jocks in the NFL and NBA have nothing on Jordan Speith.

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Okay, time for a prediction, but before that, take a look at my long shot bet that I made two weeks ago:

A victory by Tony Finau would have had me me playing on "house money" down at The Rivers Casino for the entire upcoming NFL season, but, alas and alack, Tony failed to make the cut.

As for those that are still playing, here is the top of the leader board going into the fourth round:

Gary Woodland    -11

Justin Rose          -10

Brooks Koepka     -7

Chez Reavie         -7

Louis Oosthuizen  -7

Rory McIlroy          -6

It is from among those final three pairings that the winner will emerge, and, realistically, I believe that only Woodland, Rose, and Koepka will still be in it until the end.  I suppose that a guy from back in the pack, say, Dustin Johnson would be capable of putting up a 65 today, which would get him to  eight under and reasonably close to contention, but that would assume that twenty-two other golfers tied or ahead of him would all stumble and fall back.  Not going to happen.

Who am I rooting for?  That would be Brooks Koepka because in addition to that wager above on Finau, I also dropped a ten spot on Koepka, albeit at much shorter odds, so a third straight Open for Koepka would net me eighty bucks. So there's that.

However, my official prediction for today?  Justin Rose to overtake Woodland and all others and win his second US Open title.