The Modern Open and Majors

In 1974, Sandy Tatum was in charge of setting up Winged Foot for the U.S. Open. A quote he gave that week has become a mantra for all succeeding Opens: “We’re not trying to humiliate the best players in the world. We’re simply trying to identify who they are.”

To his credit, the USGA did just that. It took the massacre at Winged Foot to stamp it down. There really isn’t a question now that the U.S. Open has been and is now the toughest golf tournament in the world with the best regularly surfacing to the top. This week in The Numbers Game, I’ll look at events leading up to and after the defining moment of U.S. Open golf and also compare this major with the others since that point in history.

1973
There is always cause and effect. To find the cause of The Massacre, we have to look back one year previous. That year, the U.S. Open was held at Oakmont Country Club and golf fans witnessed one of the greatest finishing rounds in major championship history by the NBC commentator we love to hate.

Johnny Miller decided to shoot one of the lowest numbers in U.S. Open history, a 63, in the final round at Oakmont. USGA officials saw this and thought to themselves, “never again.” This single round, 63 strokes, resulted in the Massacre. But did this have a lasting effect on U.S. Open? It certainly did the next few years.

Plus 7
It is still hard to imagine for me. I know that U.S. Opens are set up to be tough, but imagine the winner never shooting under par once in four rounds. He shoots seven over par and still wins. The funny thing is that people revel in talking about it. Heck, someone even wrote a book about it.

So since 1974, where has the U.S. Open gone? The three highest winning scores, including Winged Foot, were in the 70s. Five of the lowest six scores have been shot since 1990. If you go by decade, since the Massacre, here is the average winning score in relation to par:

Decade        Score
------        -----
2000          -5.17
1990          -4.00
1980          -4.20
1970          +1.00

From 1974 to 1979, thanks to Winged Foot, the average winning score was over par. Five shots were shaved off of that in the 80s and 90s and one more for good measure in the current decade. It is hard to say that the U.S. Open has softened in recent years given what we saw last year at Pinehurst, but the numbers don’t lie. Of course, all the players this week are saying it could be the hardest Open ever, so the average could change.

In the U.S. Opens leading up to the Massacre, the average winning score was under par. From 1970-1973 it was -2.50. In the 60s it was just a hare under par, too. It is possible that, statistically, Johnny Miller’s 63 in 1973 didn’t have the lasting effect I was thinking, but it is more of an emotional connection with the Massacre. If we add the rest of the 70s and 60s to the table above and look at every winning score except for the Massacre, you get this:

Decade        Score
------        -----
2000          -5.17
1990          -4.00
1980          -4.20
1970          -1.22
1960          -0.10

That represents a fairly normalized progression. Sure, Miller’s round had an effect the next year and probably a year or two after that, but scores have been getting lower in the U.S. Open decade by decade. My question is, will they level off? Pinehurst was nasty last year and it might take another Massacre at Winged Foot by the USGA to make another “correction.”

Personally, I like the fact that a score close to or just under par is winning. It is fun when you get excited that someone has a 25 foot birdie putt, even if they don’t make it. Because of these conditions, Mr. Tatum’s 30-plus-years-old mantra still holds true. The best golfers are rising to the top and great golf is winning out.

The Other Majors
Post Massacre, we’ve seen how winning scores at the U.S. Open leveled out around four to five under par. I can’t imagine any other tournament ever overtaking it as the hardest major. What I thought would be fun is to look at the other majors since 1974 to see if they were affected similarly in any way. We saw a couple years back how the PGA at Whistling Straights played and the pain it inflicted on the players. Is the PGA the next hardest major? Possibly the Masters? Here was my inital guess from hardest to easiest major:

1. U.S. Open
2. British Open
3. Masters
4. PGA

I wasn’t sure about the Masters and PGA given Tiger’s scores at Augusta and recent PGA tournament sites… so I consider them more of a tie with an interest towards seeing how they fall. Again, we’re just talking the average winning scores here, not all the scores from every player. So the winners are:

Major          Avg winning score
------         -----------------
U.S. Open          -3.34
British Open       -7.16
PGA Champ          -8.75
Masters           -10.06

The U.S. Open, as predicted, has the highest average winning score at 3.34 under par. The British Open came in second at 7.16 under par. More than double the U.S. Open. The PGA Championship was third at 8.75 under par about one and a quarter shots less (or more, actually) than the Masters. I guess the changes Hootie and the gang made over the past few years hasn’t helped them catch up to the other majors.

Just for fun, I wanted to look at the scores by decade like I did for the U.S. Open to see how they compare to each other. Again, the 70s only include years 1974-1979. Here are the results:

Decade    U.S. Open   British Open    PGA Champ    Masters
------    ---------   ------------    ---------    -------
2000       -5.17         -10.00         -9.83      -10.43
1990       -4.00          -8.80        -10.60      -11.50
1980       -4.20          -6.90         -8.90       -7.40
1970       +1.00          -2.00         -4.33      -11.67

The most interesting thing is that the period from 1974 to 1979 had the highest average winning score for every major but the Masters, which fell on the opposite side of the spectrum. The 80s was the only decade where the Masters didn’t have the lowest average winning score. As you can see though, the U.S. Open always had the highest score in every decade… and it really wasn’t close.

One Last Interesting Fact
While researching this column, I wanted to put this out there because of a recent forum thread debating who is better, Tiger or Phil. Tiger either holds or shares the “in relation to par” record in every major.

Major            Record      Year
------           ------      ----
U.S. Open         -12        2000
British Open      -19        2000
PGA Champ         -18        2000
Masters           -18        1997

The only one he shares is the PGA Championship total with Bob May, whom he defeated for the title in 2000. Nobody thought anyone would reach ten under in a modern U.S. Open, but Tiger did it easily at Pebble Beach. I said it in the thread and I’ll say it again. Phil has closed the gap between him and Tiger, but when the gap is the Grand Canyon, getting half way across still leaves you pretty far away from the other side.