2015 U.S. AMATEUR FOUR-BALL CHAMPIONSHIP
The Olympic Club has hosted 10 USGA national championships, including this year’s inaugural U.S. Amateur Four-Ball Championship.
The new format calls for the 64- man field to be divided into 16 four- player “groups,” akin to World Cup soccer. Round-robin match play takes place on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of tournament week, with the winner of each group advancing to the Round of 16 on Saturday morn- ing. Then it’s pure single elimina- tion until a champion is crowned on Sunday afternoon. Harding Park is a great match-
play venue, because its mix of holes offers an abundance of strategic op- tions. Plus, the old-school, tree-lined layout does not dramatically favor power hitters the way Dove Moun- tain did. Short hitters also will have a chance at Harding. So has the Match Play found a
new, permanent home? Not so fast. Tour officials wedged the tourna-
ment into an awkward spot on the schedule, the week before the Players Championship. They would prefer to keep the Match Play in late February, at the end of the West Coast swing, but that time of year often includes soggy conditions in San Francisco. That’s a big risk.
One potential solution is making
Harding the semi-permanent home of the Match Play. Maybe the event is held there every other year, or every third year. It’s not the best way to cre- ate continuity with fans, but it might be the most realistic option. “Our vision is to be a regular pres-
ence in San Francisco,” PGA Tour executive David Pillsbury said. “The best scenario is a regular rotation, with majors as bookends.”
The city’s revised contract with
the tour calls for this year’s Match Play, the 2020 PGA Championship (the first major at Harding) and the ’25 Presidents Cup. The tour also has the option of adding another event in 2016, ’17 or ’18.
FOUR-BALL Most golf fans know about The Olympic Club’s long history as a U.S. Open host—from Jack Fleck famously stunning Ben Hogan in 1955 to Webb Simpson surging out of the pack to win in 2012. But Olympic owns a similarly
deep attachment to the amateur game, which made it a natural candidate to christen the U.S. Amateur Four-Ball Championship. The club has hosted three U.S. Am-
ateurs (most recently in 2007) and one Junior Amateur (in ’04). It also sponsors amateur teams in many other sports, so the Four-Ball makes perfect sense. Bandon Dunes will host the inaugural Women’s Four-Ball from May 9-13. “We wanted to create a ‘wow’ fac- tor with our initial sites,” USGA se- nior managing director John Boden- hamer said, “and we think we’ve done that with Olympic and Bandon.” The USGA scrapped the Public Links in favor of this event. It will consist of 128 two-player teams each playing their own ball throughout the round. Each team’s score will be determined by using the lower score of the partners for each hole. After 36 holes of stroke-play
qualifying, which will include both the Lake and Ocean courses, the field
Date: May 2-6 Venue: The Olympic Club Lake Course Format: Two rounds of stroke-play qualifying (May 2-3) are followed by the first round of match play (May 4), the Round of 16 and Quarterfinals (May 5) and the Semifinals and Championship matches (May 6) This is the inaugural U.S. Amateur Four-Ball Championship
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will be reduced to the low 32 teams for match play. The remainder of the championship will take place on the Lake Course. Miller, the Hall of Famer and San
Francisco native who often played The Olympic Club in his youth, endorsed this four-ball format. He suggested it would entice amateurs who avoid tour- naments in which they’re on their own. “This could be the most popular amateur tournament in the coun- try—people could be coming out of the woodwork,” Miller said. “Players can turn it loose. They feel more free, because they have a partner to back them up.” The championship also marks the
debut of Fox Sports as the USGA’s broadcast partner. It will be interest- ing to watch the different sensibility Fox brings to the table in televising the Four-Ball action from Olympic. The event will move to Winged
Foot in New York (men) and Stream- song Resort near Tampa (women) in 2016. The initial response was encour- aging—more than 2,200 teams entered Four-Ball qualifying for this year’s event, at courses throughout the country. With the trio of major events, the
Bay Area is no longer an underserved golf market. Add in a U.S. Senior Open at Del Paso later this year (120 miles away) and a U.S. Women’s Open next year at CordeValle (40 miles), and there are a multitude of choices for golf fans. And with the future PGA Cham- pionship and President’s Cup, plus an all-but-certain return of the U.S. Open to Olympic, San Franciscans have much to look forward to.
RON KROICHICK covers golf for the San Francisco Chronicle.
SPRING 2015 /
NCGA.ORG / 41
PHOTO: USGA
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