Triplett had had enough at U.S. Open

If it looked like Kirk Triplett wasn’t having much fun during last Sunday’s final round of the 2004 U.S. Open, it was because he wasn’t.

The former Pullman resident and 20-year PGA Tour veteran, like most of his colleagues, was a little put off by the way the United States Golf Association had treated an old friend – Shinnecock Hills Golf Club.

Like they do at nearly every U.S. Open championship, the USGA’s blue-blazered caretakers of the game let a truly great golf course dry out and firm up to ridiculous levels on the weekend, supposedly in an effort to identify the golfer who was playing the best.

In this instance, it proved to be Retief Goosen, who seemed to make every putt he looked at on the back nine.

Good for Retief.

But was he the best on this day, or simply the luckiest?

I wonder, only because of the conditions the best golfers on the planet were forced to deal with. Conditions that at times seemed unfair – particularly on the 189-yard par-3 7th hole, where officials wisely decided to water the green between each group that came through after it became apparent early in the day that it was nearly impossible to keep the ball on the hard, slick and crazily-tilted putting surface.

It was so bad that Triplett purposely knocked his tee shot into the bunker just left of the green.

“I figured it was my best chance to make par there,” he explained during a phone interview from his home in Scottsdale, Ariz., earlier this week. “On Saturday, I hit what I thought was a pretty good shot in there and it ricocheted through to the green and into the back rough.”

Triplett made a bogey-4 at the 7th on Saturday and did the same from the greenside trap on Sunday after watching what he though was another pretty good bunker shot land 6 feet from the pin and then roll another 20 down the slope.

“I’ve played in 15 of these (U.S. Open) things, so I know what’s going to happen,” said Triplett, who has harvested over $11.3 million in official earnings since joining the PGA Tour in 1985. “They (USGA officials) were pushing it to the edge, like they always do in the Open, and they lost control of a couple of holes.

“It’s like pushing something to the edge of a cliff. You have to eventually decide where to stop, because if you push it over the edge, you can’t get it back.”

And Triplett is convinced that the USGA braintrusts, some of whom seem to get quite a kick out of making the greatest golfers in the world look like another gaggle of 10-handicappers, pushed a couple of holes – No. 7 and No. 10 – over the edge by getting stingy with the water over the weekend.

On No. 10, a demanding 412-yard par-4 that features a steep slope in front of the green, Triplett made a double-bogey 6 on Sunday after driving his ball within 45 yards of the pin.

“With that huge valley in front of the green, it’s a very hard hole as it is,” Triplett said. “But, normally, it’s a fun hole, because you can either lay up and leave your approach shot on the flat, about 160 or 170 yards out, or you can drive in down into the valley within 50 or 60 yards of the green, maybe even closer.”

On Sunday, after making birdie on No. 10 the previous two days, Triplett decided to stay aggressive and hit what he called “a beautiful drive” that finished down in the valley just 43 yards from the front of the green, which slopes severely from back to front.

“I left myself a straight uphill pitch,” he recalled, “but as it turned out, you couldn’t get the ball to hold the green from that position.”

Triplett’s approach shot from 43 yards away bounced and ran over the green. And his third, which seemed like a relatively easy chip and run, gathered speed as it neared the hole, raced off the front of the putting surface and back down into the valley, 10 yards past where his drive had finished.

“After being 43 yards from the green in one, I was 53 yards away in three,” Triplett recalled. “And it wasn’t like I was sculling those chips shots or anything. I was landing them on the green, but couldn’t get them to stop.”

Course conditions started to deteriorate on Saturday, when the winds kicked up, blew from a different direction than they normally do and desiccated Shinnecock’s fairways and greens.

Triplett played his Saturday round with Kevin Stadler, who had started the day at even par but ballooned to a 12-over 82 and shot himself way out of contention.

“At one point Kevin looked at me and asked, ‘How do you make a par out here?’ ” Triplett said. “I told him, ‘You just have to find a way.’ With conditions like they were, you could hit two wonderful shots and still have to make a long putt for par.”

Which is what Triplett did on his final hole on Sunday, when he made par to finish at 7-over-par 77 – a closing-round score that tied him at 291 – 11 strokes over par – and tied for 20th place with Sergio Garcia, David Toms and Mark Calcavecchia.

After holing a long putt on the 18th green, Triplett looked back down the 18th fairway, stuck out his tongue, put his thumbs in his ears and waved what seemed to be a fitting farewell to a golf course that had become too tough to tame.

His final salute was caught by the television cameras. But Triplett insists his gesture had nothing to do with how he was feeling about Shinnecock at the time.

Instead, he was giving the storied course’s 450-yard finishing hole a “Take that!” after making a world-class 4.

The television cameras, Triplett explained, also caught his 3-wood tee shot on No. 18, which somehow ended up in the unlikeliest of places – the fairway.

“That’s a feat in itself, just getting it on the short grass on that hole,” Triplett recalled.

But what the cameras didn’t show was his second shot.

“I wasn’t taking any crazy chances,” Triplett said, “so I hit a nice, safe 7-iron about 30 feet right of the pin.”

The ball stopped just a few feet from where it had landed, but only momentarily.

As Triplett was walking toward the green, he watched is dismay as his ball started to trickle backwards, caught a slope and rolled some 40 feet off the putting surface.

“I’d just hit two nice shots trying to finish up the day in the right way, and that happened,” Triplett said. “Fortunately, I hit a good chip and saved par. And that’s why I reacted like I did.”

Personally, I didn’t enjoy watching the closing act of this year’s U.S. Open, mainly because the severity of the greens and fairways turned it into a competition to see who could make the most 12-foot putts.

And that just doesn’t make for good television.

“Shinnecock is just a wonderful golf course,” Triplett said. “It has some tremendous par-3s, and, normally, it’s a really fun course to play. But when you go out there and it”s so out of control – like it was on Sunday – the enjoyability factor goes away.”

For competitors and spectators, alike.