Mamaroneck, New York (USA), Sep 16 (EFE) .- The United States Open, which appears to be the second major of the year, after the PGA Championship held in August in San Francisco and the postponed to mid-November the Augusta Masters, will be held from Thursday to Sunday at the gates of New York, on the Winged Foot path, one of the hardest and most complicated places in the history of this great.
The press conference of the United States Golf Association (USGA) in charge of organizing the second largest this season, the United States Golf Open, served to confirm the start of a competition that had been in doubt for months.
In a year plagued by the coronavirus pandemic, USGA Executive Director Mike Davies acknowledged that he does not rule out at any time the possibility of moving this 120th edition of the US Open to California in December, or even suspending the tournament. like It happened with the British Open, which was postponed to July 2021.
Finally, the US Open, which turns out to be the second major of the year, after the celebration of the PGA Championship in August in San Francisco and the postponement of the Augusta Masters in mid-November, will be held this week outside New York, on the street Winged Foot, one of the most difficult and complicated places in the history of this great.
Despite the drama looming on a field where 2006 winner Geoff Ogilvy finished with five shots above par, the usual complaints from players over the harsh conditions set by the USGA were not heard. for this week, which began with the announcement of the retirement of British Sam Horsfield and American Scottie Scheffler for testing positive for COVID-19.
Horsfield and Scheffler were the only positives and, after the initial scare, the focus shifted to the conditions of the course and the strategy of the great stars of world golf. “This field will be tough. It will depend on where they put the flags and if they give us a chance. But it will still be tough, ”said Tiger Woods, winner of four US Open and 15 majors.
For Woods, one of only fifteen players at this US Open, along with Spaniard Sergio Garcia, who also participated in the 2006 edition of Winged Foot, the strategy for navigating narrow fairways and very tall grass is to proceed with caution and not try. to take shortcuts to the green. A piece of advice he shared with the number two in the world, the Spaniard Jon Rahm.
Rahm is part of a group of boxers, led by world ranking leader Dustin Johnson, which also includes Bryson Dechambeau from the United States, whose power off the tee can be a double-edged sword this week if not combined with absolute precision. .
The conditions of the course mean that the victory is not reserved for the youngest and allow the triumph of veterans such as the American Phil Mickelson, who has a bitter memory of Winged Foot after losing the tournament on the last hole in 2006, and aspires to make up for it by winning his first US Open when he was only 50.
Although this year the US Open has lost some of its spirit of inclusion due to the suspension of the qualification phase, which more than 10,000 golfers from all over the world sign up for each year, the toughness of the course and the quality of the open participants victory options for any of the 144 entrants, including three Latin Americans, Mexican Abraham Ancer, Chilean Joaquín Niemann, Colombian Sebastián Múñoz and five Spaniards, Rahm, García, Rafa Cabrera Bello, Adrián Otaegui and young fan Eduard Rousaud.
