European players will have their best chance of competing in the US Open this year at Southern Hills in Tulsa, Oklahoma on June 14th to 17th. Apart from increasing the prize fund by $500,000 to $5 million the USGA made a significant change in the qualification process during their annual general meeting last weekend.
Starting this year, the top-50 in the world rankings on May 1st, will automatically go through to the Tulsa field. Previously, only the top-20 at the end of the previous year were exempted in this particular category.
Though the present placings from 20 to 50 are dominated by Americans, the change could help Europeans further down the order, who were not already exempt from the top-15 of the Order of Merit at the end of 2000. Darren Clarke - already through from the world rankings - and Padraig Harrington qualify on that basis, while Harrington was also exempt as a fifth-place finisher at Pebble Beach last June.
Paul McGinley, whose only US Open appearance was at Congressional in 1997, can clearly benefit from the change.
Meanwhile, no action has been taken to heal the rift between the USGA and the R and A over Callaway's controversial ERC II driver which is banned in the US but conforming in this part of the world. The R and A's concern with the golf ball and not the implements, is hotly questioned by Frank Thomas, recently-retired technical director of the USGA, in an interview with Golf Digest.
"Drivers are responsible for the biggest increase in distance that we've seen in the last 50 years," he said. "The ball that was used most commonly on the tour in the 1950s was reproduced, and Titleist did a test. We replicated those tests and found that the most popular ball being used on the tour today is only 10 to 12 yards longer than it was in the early '50s.
"The manufacturers, those that are advocating no rules, are trying to cater to golfers' wants, not their needs. I think that's exactly what Ely Callaway is doing, but it's going to be shortlived," said Thomas.
"To understand that, I think one has to recognise why people play the game of golf. A golfer doesn't tell you, `I'm trying to satisfy a subconscious urge to evaluate myself.' That is exactly what he's doing, but he doesn't verbalise that. He says, "Because I'm outdoors, because I'm competing with friends, because I'm socialising because I'm enjoying myself. And he doesn't really understand, and he doesn't need to understand, why he's playing, because the administrators do.
Thomas expressed the hope that in the final analysis, the controversy over equipment will be resolved by golfers' consciences. "I hope their consciences are going to rule," he said. "I think they're going to eventually say, `Listen, if it doesn't conform, I'm not going to play with it.'"
Yet he acknowledged: "It's a tough one. I think this is the biggest mess that the game of golf has seen for a long time."
