With all due respect to the Travelers Championship in Connecticut, the 2024 U.S. Senior Open will give New England golf fans an opportunity that doesn't come around too often.
The best senior players in the world are in Rhode Island this week at the historic Newport Country Club for the U.S. Senior Open, the second-oldest major on the senior-tour calendar. Similar to the 2022 U.S. Open at The Country Club in Brookline, Mass., this week's event in Newport gives golf-starved fans of the region a chance for an up-close look at a famously exclusive golf club.
The 156-player field is filled with past champions and tremendous stories of players who qualified their way into the field. Their stories will certainly be told as the week unfolds, but the golf course and the property are the real stars this week.
Newport Country Club is one of the oldest, most exclusive golf clubs in America. Shortly after opening in 1893, Newport hosted the USGA's first-ever tournament, the 1895 U.S. Amateur and a week later, it hosted the first U.S. Open in the tournament's illustrious history.
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This marks the first USGA championship at Newport, one of the organization's five founding clubs, since the 2006 U.S. Women's Open. Hosting the Senior Open is something of a full-circle moment for the club, as it will become just the sixth course to host the U.S. Open, U.S. Women's Open, U.S. Amateur and now the U.S. Senior Open. Newport joins historic venues -- Cherry Hills Country Club, Hazeltine National, Oakmont, Pinehurst No. 2 and Winged Foot -- as the only courses to host all four.
The champion lineage is impressive, too. Tiger Woods invaded Newport in 1995 and erased a two-hole deficit down the stretch to win the second of back-to-back U.S. Amateur titles. Eleven years later, Annika Sorenstam worked overtime, winning an 18-hole Monday playoff after surviving a weather-induced 36-hole Sunday on the shores of the Atlantic.
Arguably the best men's and women's players of all time have hoisted a trophy at Newport. Not bad.
It's not just history. At 7,024, the par-70 setup isn't exactly a brute test in terms of distance. Don't let the gorgeous views fool you, though.
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As is the case with most USGA tournaments, the eventual champion will have to pass a challenging tee-to-green test that touches every part of the bag. There are natural hazards all over the place, including the brutal 241-yard par-3 along Ocean Ave where the sea breeze could wreak some havoc (thus making it a must-see spot for spectators). The 125 bunkers -- more than 30 surrounding greens -- are going to make ball-striking imperative.
And if the rain holds off, the USGA is going to get the firm-and-fast setup it always covets.
While the U.S. Senior Open might not boast the sort of leaderboard firepower New England fans saw this past week on the PGA Tour's signature event in Hartford, this is not a tournament of no-names. There are five former U.S. Open champions in the field (Ernie Ells, Retief Goosen, Lee Janzen, Michael Campbell and Jim Furyk) as well as four Masters champions (Bernhard Langer, Mark O'Meara, Vijay Singh and Mike Weir). On top of that, you can add four more who have PGA Championship wins in their career and five more who have raised the Claret Jug as Open Championship winners. The favorites include Richard Bland, Steve Stricker, Lee Westwood and Padraig Harrington.
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Major championships in New England at any level are tough to come by, despite the area's rich history of championship golf. It's fitting then that the 2024 U.S. Senior Open will be the 1,001st USGA championship, giving Newport the opportunity to kick off the next run of a thousand as it did the first.
And it's an opportunity golf fans in the northeast shouldn't pass up.
Thumbnail photo via USGA/Fred Vuich
Featured image via USGA/Fred Vuich
