Fairway to heaven Chambers Bay will host this year’s U.S. Amateur and the U.S. Open in 2015.
1. Let the Bay-hem begin Three years after debuting as a critical hole-in-one (Golf Magazine named it the best new course in 2007), Chambers Bay is getting its major tournament coming-out party. The Scottish links course just west of Tacoma in University Place is the primary host of this year’s U.S. Amateur, but the event is just a preview to an even bigger sand-trap soiree: It’s set to host the U.S. Open in 2015. Go now so you can say you knew it before it got famous.
2. The hometown twosome If you haven’t heard of former UW duffer Nick Taylor—well, he’s a 22-year-old amateur golfer, so you probably haven’t. But he was the number one amateur in the world for 21 consecutive weeks last year, and this spring he won the Ben Hogan award, college golf’s version of the Heisman Trophy. He’ll fight 21-year-old Andrew Putnam, a University Place native and two-time All-American from Pepperdine, for the top spot on the leaderboard in a matchup that any local links lover should appreciate.
3. It’s cheaper than volunteering You could be a standup citizen of the golf community by donating your time to park cars, chauffeur players to and from the course, and hold up those little “Quiet, Please!” signs. But when they’re going to charge you $100 to do it—$35 more than a weeklong pass to the event, by the way—why wouldn’t you just pay for the freedom of watching the golf at your own pace?
4. Fairways that go boom That’s a slight exaggeration, but the Home Course, in DuPont, which will host the first two days of the tournament, was built on a former explosive waste site from a DuPont Corp. bomb factory. By all accounts, it’s a fantastic place to play, but, come on, a bomb factory! Twenty bucks to the first member of the gallery who tries to slip an exploding golf ball into Nick Taylor’s bag.
5. Moore’s mea culpa After finishing in a tie for 33rd at the 2010 U.S. Open in June, Puyallup native and 2004 U.S. Amateur champion Ryan Moore took a few sore-loser swings at the tournament’s governing body, the USGA, summing up his tirade by saying, “I’m sure all of this is going to get printed and they’re going to hate me, but I’m okay with that.” This month he’ll serve as a cochairman of the U.S. Amateur—which is conducted by the USGA. Oh, this could get awkward.
