Chambers Bay and the U.S. Golf Association have taken it on the chin all week about what fans saw in last weekend’s U.S. Open Championship.

Granted, it was difficult to follow the ball on television as it ran along the brown fairway and scooted across brown greens. For certain, fans objected to the way the ball bounced on greens and the unexpected turns putts made when there seemed to be no undulations changing their direction. This made a lot of viewers into golf critics.

Chambers Bay is a county course in which millions of taxpayer dollars have been invested, and that greens fees supposedly run as high as $200 a round, with no golf carts allowed and to walk the course is 10 miles. Assuming these financial numbers are accurate, Washington State’s Pierce County voters and taxpayers have a legitimate concern. They might wonder why fescue greens are on their course.

Ed Michaud, superintendent at Fox Ridge in Auburn, who has vast experience with fescue at Fox Ridge and Sugar Loaf, has had a personal working experience with Robert Trent Jones Jr. — the course architect of Sugar Loaf and Chambers Bay, which is located in University Place, Washington.

“He built a masterpiece, and it is a great test of golf,” said Michaud, who wonders how the course will do now that the Open has come and gone. “I’m just glad I do not live in that county.”

“Brown not green does not bother me,” Michaud said of the fescue color. “And I like the fact that they made par mean something.”

Questions about the condition of Chambers Bay probably were answered best by Bob Searle, the 29-year-old superintendent of the Abenakee Country Club in Biddeford Pool. The members of his private course approved his request to be a volunteer contingent of the 140-150 course staff at Chambers Bay last week. His experience there involved working from 3 a.m. to 7 a.m. and then from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m., Pacific Coast Time.

Searle said the greens were rolled by he and his staff twice a day and that the bouncing and bumping witnessed on TV was Mother Nature at work. Searle claims they tested greens after rolling them and they were true, and he believes the dry weather changed how the putts rolled. He also said that fescue grows at its best in the mild climate of the State of Washington.

“The USGA had personnel with us all the time,” Searle said. “We made a lot of fine-tune adjustments to the course during the tournament.”

Searle probably was selected because Abenakee has fescue and he has been superintendent there for eight years. He felt it was an outstanding experience and would do it again in a minute, knowing that the fans and media always are ready to be negative about the condition of a U.S. Open course.

“I think the criticism was a little bit overblown,” he said.

Fox Ridge pro Bob Darling was in agreement when he said: “I feel bad for the superintendent (Josh Lewis). That (course conditions) doesn’t happen overnight.”

The USGA wanted a tough course, tough conditions and no record-breaking scores. That is exactly how it worked out, although the road to that “toughness” probably was not exactly the route the USGA had planned.

Tuesday Night Fab 5

Fox Ridge will conduct “Tuesday Night Fab 5 Ladies Night” six evenings from July 7 to Aug. 11 with a 5:30 p.m. start. It offers a half-hour lesson with head pro Bob Darling, followed by playing the course’s “Fab 5,” which is five holes with enlarged cups, and concluding with a glass of wine. Information is available at 777-4653 and www.foxridgegolfclub.com.

MSGA slows down

The Maine State Golf Association tournament schedule slows down this week, as we head into Fourth of July Weekend. There is a Senior Tour event Tuesday at Brunswick, but no weekend Friday and Saturday competition this week. There will be no mid-week specials, and no regional or national competitions are scheduled, meaning it is a rare break in the MSGA tournament calendar. Tomorrow, however, there will be the makeup of last week’s rained out Maine Amateur Qualifier at Fox Ridge.

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