East Coast bias: God's will? Coincidence? Here's the inside story of how New York succeeds at getting the U.S. Open

Golf Digest, June, 2004 by Bruce McCall

EXACTLY HOW DOES THE U.S. Golf Association go about selecting sites for the U.S. Open? Nobody knows--or make that, nobody knew--until Golf Digest's crack investigative team jimmied open a window, picked a few door locks, turned left at the golf shop then right at the shower room before tiptoeing the length of the first hole at Baltusrol down the Association's labyrinthian underground corridors, pausing to catch a breath beneath a wall display of mashie niblicks. A hidden stairway, a trapdoor, a ladder, and there the team stood in the gloom of an oak-paneled anteroom, face to face with the greatest secret in golf this side of Tiger Woods' cell-phone number. What we discovered was ... well, find out for yourself on the following pages. But you have to promise not to tell.

Golf Digest Exclusive!

NEVER BEFORE HAS THE U.S. GOLF ASSOCIATION creaked open the doors of its hallowed inner sanctum and allowed nonmembers to witness the ancient ritual of U.S. Open site selection. Here in the association's clubhouse, a mere vicious hook and a wild slice from midtown Manhattan, the tension can be cut with a hacksaw as one by one the tournament selection committee's juniormost members step up to specify their choices for upcoming Open venues.

Session completed and a list of eligible courses in hand, it's time to move on to Phase II. Tradition is golf and golf is tradition: Attendants will now fetch the ancient New York State-shaped Ouija board that has guided the committee's seniormost members in winnowing the list to a handful of courses since time immemorial, or even earlier.

Their final criteria will forever remain a mystery as elusive as a major victory for Phil Mickelson. Some say it's proximity to genuine New York bagels. Others whisper of a sentimental desire to stay connected with the 1939-'40 New York World's Fair, where the USGA successfully barred the female spoilsport Babe Didrikson's entry to its exhibit. Courses that least resemble those located west of New Jersey? A plausible criterion, backed by the Association's historic ban on palm trees and cactus as course nuisances, and its means test--forever controversial--requiring the president of any club contending for a U.S. Open to be able to say "fuggedabahdit" while jumping a subway turnstile.

Whatever the grounds for its U.S. Open venue selections, one can only view the USGA and its works with awe--or, if you hail from the Midwest, Southwest or South, with a telescope!

Golf Digest Exclusive II

PRAYING THAT THEIR CHRONIC U.S. Open drought may soon be over, golf leaders from states not named New York convene at the 19th hole of a California course to watch via live closed-circuit TV as USGA bigwigs back East ponder sites for future U.S. Opens.

Will New York's uncanny streak of luck continue? Certain omens might suggest so to the suspicious and the soreheaded. A glance at the blatantly Big-Applecentric USGA message boards ringing the jacuzzi has cynics mumbling that another "New York fix" is in. And those overhead monitors flashing the word that one elite Western course after another is out of the running as an Open venue can only serve to further fuel unhealthy thoughts.

Now, to the jaunty strains of "New York, New York," the decision is announced. Shouts of "Bravo" in the USGA clubhouse all but drown out cries of "fix" everywhere else across the nation.

For the Empire State's luck has held. After Bethpage Black in '02 and Shinnecock again in '04, it'll be Winged Foot in '06 and back to Bethpage in '09! Two Long Island courses and one just west of the Long Island Sound--and here's the beauty part--as such, all three of them closer to the West Coast and its chronic whiners than any other courses in continental America! *

So much for all the muttering about cronyism, parochialism and the allegedly "Eastern-dominated" USGA's so-called "rank favoritism." Simply put, everybody wins. New York gets half the U.S. Opens of recent years. Perennial have-not California gets a front-row seat in the gallery, and the rest of American golfdom gets to stand around and watch from afar. Time to break out that jeroboam of New York State champagne!

* If flying from Montauk Point eastbound around the globe.