NEW YORK CITY – The transformation of the U.S. Golf Association into a body representing all of golf and not simply its blue-blood variant is just about complete.
That was evident as early as the opening press conference of the annual meeting Feb. 7 at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, when USGA president Thomas J. O’Toole Jr. and executive director Mike Davis showed up to announce the association’s new national championship, the U.S. Senior Women’s Open, to be contested annually starting in 2018.
It’s all part of inclusiveness, an effort on the part of the USGA to steward the future of the game. In an era of concern about golf’s future, the USGA is undertaking a wide-based approach to making sure that the game is sustainable culturally, economically and ecologically.
The details of the U.S. Women’s Senior Open were sparse – professional and amateur female players 50 years and older will be eligible to compete. There were no details provided as to a venue, purse, size of field or time of the year. But the announcement, as O’Toole made clear, comes after sustained internal debate and direct meetings with what he called “stakeholders” – meaning senior and soon-to-be-senior women, who saw a void in the championship slate that needed to be filled.
All we know for now is that they’ll contest it in 2018 over four days, 72 holes of stroke play, with a 36-hole cut. But if ever there was a serious gesture that would embrace senior women golfers, this was it – a complement to the U.S. Senior Open, which has been contested since 1980.
Equally impressive was O’Toole and Davis’ excitement about taking the U.S. Open in 2015 to the Pacific Northwest for the first time, and also for the first time, on an all-fine fescue golf course, Chambers Bay in University Park, Wash., just west of Tacoma. For them, the move is the next logical step on a path the USGA undertook in 2014, when it held back-to back national championships – a U.S. Open and U.S. Women’s Open – on the same golf course, Pinehurst No. 2.
It was a course that was deliberately presented as brow, stressed out on the edges and an ecological marvel in terms of its reduced water use. Davis admitted that the experiment of a tawny, brown-looking course was widely perceived by overseas audiences and by most of the 312 contestants themselves as a success, but was less than overwhelmingly approved by the American golfing public. Davis termed it a “50-50” equation in terms of favorable U.S. responses. But he’s also adamant in continuing that type of championship presentation where the course setting and turf types allow for it.
That’s part of the USGA’s embrace of a more sustainable ecological approach to golf. That was also the subject of two-hour morning session that saw governmental water managers, agronomists and even Hall of Famer (and Fox Sports golf announcer) Greg Norman embrace the “brown is beautiful” approach.
For the USGA, it’s clearly a matter of ecology, but also of business sustainability. Norman, ever the optimist, anticipated possible savings of up to 30 percent in maintenance costs if true water efficiency could be achieved. For those in the know, that’s a heady figures, certainly too rosy. But the intent and enthusiasm were there and the basic intent admirable. Such is the optimism and stewardship on on display here at this year’s USGA meeting.
