By Richard Carrier, Contributing Writer
richwrites@netzero.net

I may be the only sports writer who is not going to write a piece on the U.S. Open Golf Tournament held on Long-Submerged Island last week.

Not to say that even besides the weather there were not a dozen or so compelling stories.

The Mickelson’s cancer fight is one that is significant to me and as familiar as his tendency to fade in the stretch.

While I’m always scratching around for those Rickie Barnes and John Daly underdog stories, one collapsed and the other never got to the point where a collapse would have mattered. Then there was the enigmatic David Duval, a great character for a Stephen King novel but about as compelling an interview as George W.

The golf press couldn’t get excited about the unexcitable, molasses-voiced champion, Lucas Glover, so they hammered Sergio for, yet again, not winning a Major.

Little Lefty (Mike Weir and his hybrid) showed great potential to be the Open’s giant killer, but he too wilted down the stretch and his story potential faded into the waist high rough at Bethpage Black. Oh yeah, there was that Tiger guy who got totally screwed by the draw and Mother Nature.

I admit to watching a maximum of four golf events per year and this was one I pretty much saw all four (or was it five ... six?) rounds of.

But my opinion of the athleticism of even these best in the business hasn’t changed; these guys are skilled technicians but they just aren’t athletes. There may be some who are athletic, as in built with that perfect Eldrick Wood torso, but throw the entire field into a two-mile training run and the half that finished would be walking at the end and passed by the entire junior varsity football team.

I also have to admit that this particular event, and I don’t know why it was this one and not one of the dozen or so majors I’ve watched before, really made me aware of a phenomenal skill set a good golfer possesses.

It is the general understanding and statement in the sports world that the hardest thing to do is to hit a baseball. This can’t be said of a golf ball. After all, the sucker is just sitting there. In fact, at least 18 times per round, you get to jack it up and make it even easier to smack.

That dimpled darling may be smaller than its cowhide counterpart, but it ain’t coming at you at 100 miles and hour or gyrating like a drunken snake.

Please note that I while I stated a golf ball was easier to hit, the magic that good golfers possess is the uncanny ability to hit a golf ball over great distances and land it near or in a miniscule target.

A good home run hitter can’t quite match the distance of a good golfer’s drive, but when it comes to controlled accuracy a baseball batter isn’t in the same ballpark (pun intended) as even an average golfer.

Babe Ruth may have called his homer but he didn’t and couldn’t have called, within two hundred feet, where it would land.

Frankly, good golfers are kind of snobbish about the accuracy thing. It’s not enough to land a 250-yard shot within feet, or even inches, of the cup. They may selectively curve the ball around an offending tree, bend it to match the turn in a fairway, fly it over an obstruction, under a tree branch or execute some uncanny combination of these skills.

Engineering-wise, the accurate striking of a golf ball is the nightmare that would have kept J. Robert Oppenheimer sleepless in Los Alamos.

Consider this: before even the average golfer addresses the ball (I always addressed mine as, “Listen Up, You Devious Piece of Crap”) the following engineering points of interest must have been recognized and accepted as essential aspects in the accurate striking of a golf ball: Shaft length and weight, groove number, depth and angle, gravity angle, gear effect, lie angle, kick point, moment of inertia, flow design, bend point, flex point, moraging steel, coefficient of restitution and characteristic time.

Then there is an additional comprehensive glossary of technical terms; swing weight, loft, bounce angle, Stimp meter, trampoline effect and on and on which must be confronted and comprehended.

I suppose we (I) can forgive the average professional golfer for his two inch vertical, eleven second 40 and four reps at 32 pounds in the Bench. These guys are far to busy being cerebral to ever find their way to a gym.