It remains one of the indelible moments in the rich history of the American national championship.
Playing in a surreal, misty haze, the late Payne Stewart made a Richter Scale-rattling 15-foot par putt on the final hole of the 1999 US Open to beat Phil Mickelson by a stroke, then thrust a fist through the air in celebration as the crowd erupted.
That snapshot in time has been commemorated in a life-size statue of Stewart, which is positioned directly behind the 18th green at famed Pinehurst No 2.
The circumstances of the five preceding minutes have been all but forgotten.
They began with a poor tee shot off the 18th tee from Stewart, who then had to hack a wedge shot out of the Open’s traditional, ankle-deep rough. That set the stage for a long pitch shot and his clutch par putt to win.
When he saw his ball buried in the deep grass after his tee shot, Stewart, chomping on a wad of gum, had a look of utter disgust on his face.
Unlike the statuesque pose, that slice of time is best forgotten, because, as the US Open this week visits Pinehurst for the third time in 15 years, it is not likely to happen again.
After years of scaling back the punitive rough that once made US Open fairways look like tile floors surrounded by shag carpet, the US Golf Association this week has gone au natural. For the first time, there will be no formal rough.
The area on the right side of the 18th fairway, where Stewart sent his drive into six-inch grass in 1999, has become a mix of barren sand, pine straw, pinecones and yellowy wire grass, setting the stage for one of the most unique tests in US Open history.
Two years ago, the Pinehurst Resort hired Hall of Famer Ben Crenshaw and design partner Bill Coore to restore the famous Donald Ross venue, which dates to 1907.
The two architects first went to the local library and dug out old aerial photos from the 1930s and 1940s.
In a bold move, they removed 40 acres of Bermuda rough and let Mother Nature handle the rest.
Situated in a North Carolina region called the Sandhills, players who miss fairways this week will have a chance to hit heroic recovery shots from mostly barren lies that could create the legend and lore of players like Stewart.
“It was wall-to-wall green,” said Bob Dedman, whose company owns the resort. “It was really monochromatic out there. It had become really part of the homogenisation of the game of golf.”
The unirrigated sandy areas now are strewn with swales, hardpan, burnt-out grass, footprints and other native debris, marking the biggest departure from the Open’s over-manicured horticulture in more than 100 years.
Spray a shot into the sand and instead of the inevitably boring chop-out shot to the middle of the fairway with a wedge, a staple of decades past, anything could happen. “It will be pot luck,” Crenshaw said.
The visuals are stark. Ribbons of green fairway are surrounded by a brownish crust, like a rectangular spinach pizza.
“There was a lot of pressure, because it was going to be a shock, what we were going to do,” Crenshaw told the PGA Tour website. “I’m sure people were wondering, ‘What are they doing out there’?”
Two-time US Open champion Curtis Strange played the course last week and spied just about everything where the rough was once located, not necessarily including his ball. “It was like the worst-kept lawn you have ever seen in your life,” said Strange, who will work this week as a broadcaster for ESPN.
“It is dandelions growing 12 or 15 inches, low-growing weeds and, in some cases, it’s difficult to find the golf ball.”
In an even bigger departure from tradition, fans will get a stereophonic dose of Pinehurst’s minimalist look, since the US Women’s Open next week will be held on the same course, marking the first Open double-header in history.
The rough-hewn borders of the picture notwithstanding, the greens at Pinehurst shall forever remain the course’s defining characteristic. The putting surfaces at No 2 are shaped like inverted bowls, with sloped edges that repel shots.
Worse, the surrounding areas are shaved, so balls falling off the slopes can roll 20 or 30 yards on some holes. “They’re great art forms,” Crenshaw said.
An apt choice of words. If Ross is the Van Gogh of golf architects, the greens at No 2 have been described as something from a Salvador Dali painting – the edges just melt away.
They can be infuriating and borderline unfair. On the eighth hole of the 1999 US Open, double Major winner John Daly was so annoyed that he smacked a moving ball with his putter as it rolled back towards him in the final round.
His previous two putts up the banked fringe reached the green and rolled to within a few feet of the hole, but they did not hold on the crown and rolled off. He was hit with a two-shot penalty and made an 11.
That said, merely getting to the greens will be a unique experience, given the unpredictable areas where rough was once water-bombed, fertilised and cultivated. Now it is Dedman’s dead zone.
“We felt like we had become too much like everybody else,” Dedman said.
The hack-it-out, stultifying sameness of past Opens has been given a two-week reprieve. Hall of Famer Johnny Miller won the 1973 US Open during an era when players could practically lose a golf bag in the rough and has been around the game for half a century.
Breaking the US Open design template to bits, the Pinehurst set-up represents historical heresy of the best kind, he said.
There “has never been anything like it, I don’t think, in Open history, that really has no rough”, Miller said.
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