SECOND TIME A TRUER TEST : After 90-Year Interlude, U.S. Open Returns to Breezy Shinnecock Hills

The second United States Open golf championship attracted 35 players, only 28 of whom completed the 36-hole, one-day tournament held at the Shinnecock Hills Golf Club in Southampton, N.Y., on the eastern end of Long Island. The winner received $150. The year was 1896.

The U.S. Open returns to Shinnecock Hills this week for the first time in 90 years with an entry of 5,410 players, of whom 156 will tee off Thursday. The winner will receive $115,000 from a purse of $700,000.

More than money and the size of the field has changed since the fledgling U.S. Golf Assn. threw in the Open championship almost as an afterthought to the U.S. Amateur, which was played earlier in the same week in July.

James Faulis, a Scottish-born professional from the Chicago Golf Club, shot 78-74--152 to win the 1896 tournament by three strokes over defending champion Horace Rawlings, an Englishman who was an assistant professional at the Newport Golf Club in Rhode Island. Faulis’ tournament record 74, made with a gutta percha ball, would last seven years before it was broken by a player using a revolutionary rubber-core ball.

The Amateur was the major attraction with the cream of America’s simon-pure golfers playing a 36-hole qualifying round and three days of match play. It was won by H.J. Whigham of Lake Forest, Ill., who had learned the game in England while attending Oxford.

The Open was held the day after the Amateur ended, primarily for English and Scottish professionals who had recently emigrated across the Atlantic to spread their game of pasture pool to the rich aristocrats with time on their hands.

Rules have changed, too. In the Amateur, a player from Newport named Richard Peters “putted” with a billiard cue, his knuckles down on the green as though it were the green of a pool table. He failed to qualify.

Shinnecock Hills played to only 4,423 yards in 1896. This year the USGA has stretched it out to 6,912 yards--172 yards longer than the members play. Par 70 has remained the same since the course was redesigned in 1931 by Dick Wilson.

It is not the United States’ oldest golf course, though it is close, but it does have the distinction of having the oldest clubhouse. Built in 1892 by famed architect Stanford White--who also designed the original Madison Square Garden--the clubhouse has been expanded over the years but the old wooden structure with its second story gables must look much the same sitting atop a grassy knoll looking out at Peconic Bay and on toward the Long Island Sound as it did nearly a century ago. A few miles behind the weathered building lies the Atlantic.

The club was a charter member of the USGA when the organization was founded in 1984. Other members were the St. Andrew’s Golf Club of Yonkers, N.Y., the Chicago Golf Club, the Country Club of Brookline, Mass., and the Newport, R.I., Golf Club.

What is the same today as it was 90 years ago is the character of the course, spread out across the rolling dunes of the Hamptons like a British or Scottish links courses. There are few trees to break the ever-present wind. Shinnecock Hills, as purists point out, is not a true links course because it is inland and not along the Long Island seashore, but nevertheless it gives one a feeling of golf’s Scottish origins.

Frank Hannigan, executive director of the USGA and the man responsible for getting the exclusive course as this year’s Open site, says, “Shinnecock is not that much different in locale from the British Open at St. Andrew’s.”

Shinnecock Hills, although only 90 miles from downtown New York and rated among the top 25 courses in the country, does not have the reputation of Open venues such as Baltusrol, Merion, Oakland Hills, Winged Foot, Pebble Beach or even Riviera. For one thing, the course is closed from November to April. For another, it has only 300 members who keep it rigidly private--enough so that it made Golf magazine’s list of the country’s 50 snobbiest clubs.

Jack Nicklaus, 46, who will seek his fifth Open championship and the second leg on his decades-old dream of a Grand Slam this week, played the course for the first time last summer. And that was only because the Open had been scheduled there this year and ABC-TV wanted to shoot some background for the championship.

“I wasn’t quite as serious about it then as I am now,” Nicklaus said, alluding to the fact that his win in the Masters makes this week’s Open of much more significance to him. “It will play longer than the yardage indicates. It’s a pretty good-sized course and like most Open courses, tee shots will be a premium because there is a heavy growth just off the fairways.”

The heavy growth is not Scottish gorse, but it is a honey-colored straw-like grass that can rip a club from a player’s grip. USGA officials say it will be four inches deep for the Open.

Bob Hope played there a few years ago and had this to say about the rough: “If you hit it in there, you need a tetanus shot.”

Said Nicklaus: “The course has a wild look to it, rather like an English course, rather than a Scottish links course. It’s not a true seaside course because it is inland, but it does have some of the elements of the British courses.

“It will call for a variety of tee shots. That means it’s a thinking man’s course. If I play well, it could be suited for my game. A couple of years ago, when I first heard that we were going to play at Shinnecock, I thought that would be nice. It was about time it got back in the (Open) rotation (after 90 years).

“When I won at Augusta, it changed my perspective. The way I look at the Slam, and when you’ve won the Masters you can’t help but think about it because you’re the only one who can. I feel like I’ve got the tough one behind me. Augusta is a course where you must dominate the par-five holes to win. It favors a player like Seve (Ballesteros) or (Greg) Norman, guys who can hit it out there so far they’re playing a different game. Augusta is a young man’s course and the Masters is a young man’s tournament. As I grew older, it became the hardest of the four majors for me to win.”

Late in the afternoon of April 13, out among the azaleas of Augusta, he made it look easy with five birdies and an eagle for a 30 on the back nine to win his sixth green Masters jacket. During one heroic rush at 15, 16 and 17, Nicklaus went eagle-birdie-birdie to overwhelm the front-running Ballesteros and thwart the challenges of Norman and Tom Kite.

It was Nicklaus’ 20th major championship. In addition to his six Masters, he has won five PGAs, four U.S. Opens, three British Opens and two U.S. Amateurs.

In his five previous attempts at a Grand Slam--winning the Masters, U.S. Open, British Open and PGA in the same year--the closest Nicklaus has come was in 1972 when he won the Masters and the Open at Pebble Beach before he finished second to Lee Trevino in the British Open at Muirfield, Scotland.

Two ingredients Nicklaus used at Augusta that will be with him at Shinnecock Hills are his caddy, Jack Jr., and his oversized putter.

On Jack Jr.: “Certainly I’ve been playing long enough that I can read putts, but it doesn’t hurt to have a second thought when there’s a difficult break. Take the ninth hole at Augusta. I read about four-to-five inch break outside the hole. Jackie said ‘left lip.’ I played it pretty straight and it was just about right. Sometimes the yardage markers are different from Jackie’s and mine. We talk it over and usually compromise. Jackie also knows my swing. He understands it so well that I can get an answer from him on what I’m doing in a way that I can relate. He will definitely be with me in the U.S. Open.”

On his putter: “I had two tournaments in a row earlier in the year where I couldn’t make a putt. I saw some people trying a big putter, so I decided it might be worth a look. I took one with me to Hawaii and I putted very well. I didn’t have a three-putt green and I made everything inside six feet. The more I fiddled with it, the more I liked it.

“Compared to my original putter, the old one looks like a peanut. In fact, when I see guys using conventional putters, the putters look silly to me. On short putts, the big head makes a significant difference. Most players, including myself, have a tendency to pull up. That can make you stop being aggressive. The large putter eliminates that problem. It has more inertia and a larger sweet spot.”

Getting to the greens will take some doing this week. Although the total yardage is not overwhelming, the par-4 holes are long, and can be even longer if the wind is blowing in the golfer’s face. Of the 12, four are under 400 yards, two slightly over 400 and six that play more than 440. The monsters are No. 6, 471 yards, and No. 12, 472 yards.

The jewel is No. 14, 444 yards through a shallow valley with a slight dogleg to the right, anchored by fairway bunkers on both sides and more sand protecting the green.

“Shinnecock’s 14th is among the great holes of American golf,” wrote editor Bob Sommers in Golf Journal.

There are only two par 5s and they are more reasonable, 535 and 544 yards. Four par 3s range from an uphill shorty of 158 yards to a monstrous 226.

Ben Crenshaw set the course record of five-under-par 65 back in 1973 when he was an amateur, but he is quick to admit that “even though I holed everything out, it was set up far different than an Open course.”