Imrem: Pro golfers need to stop whining about U.S. Open conditions
Few things are more annoying than pro golfers whining.
What's next, billionaires complaining about the cost of industrial-size wallets?
I don't want to hear golfers criticizing their working conditions any more than you want to hear me complain about early deadlines.
Look, the U.S. Open was as difficult to watch as it was to play in over the weekend.
Our national championship should be contested on American-style courses, not whatever Chambers Bay was.
Putts weren't any more difficult to make on bumpy greens than the cups were for viewers to locate on their TVs.
FOX, televising a major golf tournament for the first time, came across as a network televising a major golf tournament for the first time.
Golf fans have a legitimate reason to gripe, grouse and groan about these inconveniences.
Golfers?
Stop it, fellas.
I played nine holes in the rain on Monday morning. Not a hard rain. More of a persistent drizzle, but the water was wet just the same.
Nobody paid me to be out there and I didn't have a chance to win a chunk of the U.S. Open's $10 million with a top prize of $1.8 million that went to Jordan Spieth.
Silly me: I was glad to have to pay to be out there and shoot an incalculable number.
My game is so bad that some of the regulars are urging me to start playing from the senior tees.
“Try it,” they say. “You'll have more fun.”
“I don't play to have fun,” I say. “I play to be miserable so when I get home the rest of my life seems OK.”
So dummy up, Billy Horschel, and quit torching Chambers Bay's greens. You, too, Ian Poulter, quit calling them disgraceful, You, too, Gary Player, quit saying that Chambers Bay is “the worst golf course I might've ever seen.”
Here are the rules: Spectators at a tourney can rant if the vantage points are impossible; viewers at home can rant if TV analysts are irritating; sports columnists can rant because that's our job.
Golfers? Their job is to be quiet and thankful they play a noncontact sport for a living.
Heck, pro golfers want to be considered athletes? Well, they aren't tackled, thrown at or fouled hard … yet some sniffle like the greens threaten to swallow them up?
These guys certainly aren't soldiers being shot at, firefighters carrying children out of burning buildings or social workers venturing into bad neighborhoods to save souls.
Being paid to play golf is like being given free popcorn for taking Heidi Klum to the movies.
It's so refreshing that the Masters, U.S. Open, British Open and to some extent PGA Championship are bigger than the golfers themselves.
Major tournaments don't have to set up their courses like the Greater Podunk Classic, where every blade of grass must be perfect to keep pampered players coming back.
The majors are more like, “OK, gentlemen, the greens might be rocky, the bunkers are like sandy penitentiaries, the pin placements are nasty … now accept our invitation to participate or we'll find someone to take your place.”
If the USGA wants to schedule the U.S. Open inside Woodfield Mall with linoleum fairways, that's the deal, dudes. Take it or leave it.
How unfair could Chambers Bay have been anyway if Spieth, No. 2 in the world, won at 5 under par, eight players broke par for 72 holes and Louie Oosthuizen shot 29 on the back nine?
After hearing the noise coming out of Chambers Bay, hopefully the greens at next month's British Open will be topped with porridge.
mimrem@dailyherald.com