Slide show

Oakmont images View photographs from the 2007 U.S. Open in Pennsylvania.

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Amateurs running a professional tournament. Guys who can’t break 80 on a good day deciding how to set up a course for a game they’re unfamiliar with.

This wouldn’t happen at the Bob Hope Classic.

“Sometimes it’s hard to accept you hit great shots and make bogeys,” J.J. Henry said.

Par was just a concept on this day, and birdie a remote notion. When two-time champion Lee Janzen rolled a 55-footer through two valleys, across three ledges and through the clown’s mouth for one on the ninth hole, it was a rare feel-good moment on a day when embarrassment loomed on every shot.

“There are times you feel if there’s a hole next to the bunker and you can crawl in it, it would be great,” Janzen said.

Unfortunately, there aren’t many places to hide at Oakmont. The trees that used to line the fairways have been cut down, and the course lays open to both players and fans.

The rough isn’t going to get any shorter over the next two days, and the greens aren’t going to get any easier. The player who finally scratches his way to win the coveted major will have to deal with both over the next 36 holes.

Tiger Woods understands that better than most because he’s won two of these things. But even he was shaking his head with a wry grin on his face, practically begging the USGA to at least water the greens overnight.

They plan to do that but insist that things are just the way they want them. Even par is leading the Open, and that’s just fine with the guys in blazers.

Besides, somebody did shoot a 66, right? So what that 35 others couldn’t break 80?

Leave it to an Englishman playing another country’s national championship to be among the rare few to agree.

“There’s no point bitching and moaning that it is a difficult golf course because it is a tough golf course,” Ian Poulter said. “It is not supposed to be easy.”