The Country Club is getting its first U.S. Open in three decades, and Los Angeles Country Club is set to host its first major championship.
The USGA announced three sites for the U.S. Open on Wednesday, including a return to Pinehurst No. 2. It effectively alternates the U.S. Open between the East Coast and prime-time TV of California for at least a seven-year stretch.
The U.S. Open will go to The Country Club in 2022, the course outside Boston that was the scene of perhaps the most important golf championship in American history. It’s where Francis Ouimet won a playoff over British titans Harry Vardon and Ted Ray. The upset put golf on the front pages of newspapers.
Curtis Strange won the last U.S. Open in Brookline in 1988. The last big event there was the Ryder Cup in 1999 that featured the great American comeback under captain Ben Crenshaw.
The newcomer is an old classic — the North Course at Los Angeles Country Club, which gets the U.S. Open in 2023. It will be the first time the U.S. Open is held in Los Angeles since Ben Hogan won at Riviera in 1948.
LA North is on the other side of the 405 freeway near Beverly Hills. George C. Thomas redesigned the course in 1927, and Gil Hanse restored it five years ago.
“We’re in for a real treat,” USGA executive director Mike Davis said. “It will be a wide U.S. Open. The course will have generous fairways, and it will be firm and fast. And it will be great to take the U.S. Open to the second-largest city in the country.”
Pinehurst No. 2 in North Carolina gets its fourth U.S. Open in 2024 as it becomes a regular part of the U.S. Open rotation. Martin Kaymer won in 2014, and Michelle Wie won a week later when the USGA played the men’s and women’s Opens in back-to-back weeks. The USGA did not mention whether it will try another doubleheader.
The U.S. Open starts its East Coast-West Coast rotation in 2018 at Shinnecock Hills on Long Island. From there it goes to Pebble Beach in 2019, Winged Foot in New York in 2020, Torrey Pines in San Diego in 2021, The Country Club in 2022, Los Angeles in 2023 and Pinehurst in 2024.
That’s as far out as the U.S. Open is planned, and even nine years out is a long time for typical USGA planning.
Ahead of the U.S. Opens, Pinehurst No. 2 will host the U.S. Amateur Four-Ball Championship in 2017 and the U.S. Amateur in 2019. LA North will have the Walker Cup in 2017.
Thumbnail photo via Twitter/@SInow
