June 16, 2008
SAN DIEGO - Enjoy to day's 18-hole U.S. Open playoff between Tiger Woods and Rocco Mediate - if you get to see it that is.
If you can get the day off from work today or simply call in sick, you'll get to tune into ESPN at noon to see Woods try to win his 14th career major, or Mediate break through with his first major at age 45 as the oldest U.S. Open winner ever.
An 18-hole playoff is a senseless, anticlimactic way to end a major championship. Sudden death is too harsh a way to finish and unfair for the player who might have his one bad hole in the playoff.
The British Open, which has a immediate four-hole playoff, does it best. The PGA Championship, which uses a three-hole playoff, is not a bad option, either.
It's a shame and shocking, based on the boring playoffs the USGA has seen played under its watch, that it wouldn't have changed its archaic system by now.
As is always the case with these Monday playoffs, the compelling plot lines do not match the theater the USGA has created.
There's no way the USGA will be able to recreate the electricity that surged throughout Torrey Pines yesterday.
Why not ride the momentum of what have been two of the most thrilling days the U.S. Open has ever seen?
Instead, Woods and Mediate will tee off at 9 a.m. local time tomorrow in front of a smattering of spectators by comparison to the 55,000 that jammed the grounds yesterday. The atmosphere will be sleepy by comparison to the way it was yesterday.
And, in all likelihood, the tournament will be over long before the players reach the fabulous theater of grandstands that surround the 18th green.
Chances are great that, had Woods and Mediate been sent out to the 14th or 15th hole right after regulation, they would have provided a scintillating, possibly memorable playoff.
That momentum is dead now.
"I would rather go right now, but that's just me," Woods said.
Asked if he could go back out onto the course yesterday, Mediate said, "I don't know if I could. I'd probably find a way. But I think the 18-hole playoff for the National Open is the way to go."
Yes, but who remembers that epic 2001 U.S. Open playoff between Retief Goosen and Mark Brooks, the last time this tournament went to a Monday playoff?
As someone who was there covering the event, I can tell you it wasn't memorable at all. It was an uninspiring event.
I, too, covered the Annika Sorenstam-Pat Hurst U.S. Women's Open Monday playoff at Newport Country Club a few years ago and it was like watching a club championship with a couple hundred people following the action. Sorenstam routed Hurst for the win.
It's a shame that, during a week in which the USGA should be universally praised for its fair and exciting course set-up at Torrey Pines, the organization has to ruin what would have been a memorable finish in the late afternoon California afternoon yesterday.
Put simply, regardless of who's playing in them, Monday playoffs are a complete buzz kill and something needs to be done to correct this mistake.
They need to be eliminated in favor of an immediate four-hole playoff.
Perhaps an anticlimactic lopsided victory by Woods over Mediate today will spur the USGA to make the change.
