re: US Open might as well be another tour event

quote:

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That 8 people were below 280 in soft conditions?
Just like the traditional US Open setup of Congressional?

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I get where you are going here. Relative to par is just a arbitrary number. Total strokes is a better way to look at it. But I think the main issue people are having is that historically the media and fans use relative to par instead of total strokes when comparing years.

Example. Tiger wins in 2000 with 272. -12 and 15 strokes better than anyone else and no other players even close to being under par.
Koepka wins yesterday with 272 but there were 30 other guys under par.
Rory wins in 2011 with a 268 and -16 but only one person is within 10 strokes and only 19 other guys under par.

Koepka isn't in the same neighborhood as those performances.

This win is being called record breaking. It really isn't except for the fact that the course played to par 72. They play this to 71 or 70 and the comparison changes to a better reflection of what has always been "historical".

The other issue was that the fairways were freaking runways. I can land the ball on fairways that wide. One of the things about the open has always been how really good players wouldn't crack 90 on an open setup.
It was the absolute last US Open that Lefty should have skipped.

It just wasn't what a US Open is and it feels like a cop out to some people. They feel like the USGA is artificially creating "history" and storylines.